Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown Thursday met with police officials and addiction experts in Dayton. It's one of many health-care related appearances Brown, who has spoken out against Republican-backed legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, has made across the state this week.
The event at the East End Community Services Center focused on the potential impacts of the House American Health Care Act on addiction treatment programs. The bill calls for steep cuts to Medicaid, and Brown says those and other cuts would hinder the state’s ongoing efforts to combat opioid addiction.
“Ohio has more opioid deaths than any state in the country, and that’s why I’m still amazed that so many Ohio members of Congress would take away coverage, take away the treatment that literally 200,000 Ohioans get from the Affordable Care Act. You take that treatment away from them and those families just, the terrible things that can happen, they are turned upside down with that addiction,” he says.
Montgomery County officials say the county is on track this year to more than double the number of accidental overdose deaths reported last year.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently found that, if passed, the American Health Care Act would cut federal deficits by more than $300 billion over the next decade and leave 24 million Americans without coverage.
