WASHINGTON, DC – Amidst Trump administration attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement plan, U.S. Rep. Katie Hill used a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing to show how devastating this would be to our fight against the opioid crisis.

“When I speak to people in our district — whether they’re community health centers and clinics, physicians and nurses, hospital associations, or patient groups — I hear, by and large, that we must focus on increasing access to critical services like treatment centers, not decreasing those services and incentives,” said Hill, D-Santa Clarita.

In the hearing, Frederick Isasi, the Executive Director of Families USA, stated that the number one tool in America to fight the opioid epidemic is the Medicaid expansion enacted through the Affordable Care Act. Dr. Abbe Gluck, the Director of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale University Law School pointed out that before the ACA, 45 percent of individual healthcare plans did not cover substance use disorder treatment. She added that there is nothing more important to combating the opioid crisis than getting Americans covered.

“If this Administration succeeds in using stacked courts to repeal the healthcare of millions of Americans, an estimated 60,000 individuals in our community alone will lose coverage. On top of that, millions of Americans battling substance use disorder will lose access to treatment, exacerbating of the worst public health crises in our country’s history. We can’t let that happen,” Hill concluded.

Video of the exchange can be found here.