logo
  • Nonprofit News
  • Management
    • Boards and Governance
    • Communication
      • Framing & Narratives
    • Ethics
    • Financial Management
    • Grassroots Fundraising Journal
    • Leadership
    • Technology
  • Philanthropy
    • Corporate Social Responsibility
    • Donor-Advised Funds
    • Foundations
    • Impact Investing
    • Research
    • Workplace Giving
  • Policy
    • Education
    • Healthcare
    • Housing
    • Government
    • Taxes
  • Economic Justice
    • About
    • Economy Remix
    • Economy Webinars
    • Community Benefits
    • Economic Democracy
    • Environmental Justice
    • Fair Finance
    • Housing Rights
    • Land Justice
    • Poor People’s Rights
    • Tax Fairness
  • Racial Equity
  • Social Movements
    • Community Development
    • Community Organizing
    • Culture Change
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Gender Equality
    • Immigrant Rights
    • Indigenous Rights
    • Labor
    • LGBTQ+
    • Racial Justice
    • Youth Activism
  • About Us
  • Log in
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Featured Articles
  • Webinars
    • Free Webinars
    • Premium On-Demand Webinars
  • Tiny Spark Podcast
  • Magazine
    • Magazine
    • Leading Edge Membership
Donate
Access to Healthcare, Affordable Care Act, Georgia, Methadone/Safe Injection Clinics, Opioid Crisis, Tennessee

No Room at the Inn for Addicted People in Some States

Erin Rubin
May 4, 2017
Share8
Share2
Email
Tweet
“Opium poppy (post harvest)” by Laughlin Elkind

May 2, 2017; Associated Press, “AP News”

The state of Georgia is exhibiting some isolationist tendencies when it comes to addiction treatment. Frustrated with the high number of Tennessee residents who cross into Georgia to receive methadone treatment, legislators introduced rules that make it harder to open more clinics in the areas of the state near the Tennessee border.

Georgia has 71 treatment centers, the most in the South; Florida has twice Georgia’s population, yet has only 69 centers. At least 12 states have fewer than 10 clinics each.

Tennessee has some of the worst health statistics in the country, particularly when it comes to addiction. Over 15 percent of the state’s adult residents lack basic medical care because of cost barriers; 16 percent have no health insurance. Over 1,200 residents died of substance abuse in 2014, and one in six Tennesseans are estimated to be in various stages of misuse, abuse, and treatment.

Tennessee has been struggling to deal with the problem since 2012, when the state passed the Prescription Safety Act and determined that mothers whose babies tested positive for drugs would go to jail (a provision of the law since ended). Strict rules were set governing pain management clinics and the dispensing of addiction treatment drugs like methadone (which state Medicaid doesn’t cover anyway), causing half the 300 addiction treatment centers in the state to close between 2015-2017.

Right across the border in Georgia, the opioid addiction crisis also looms, but treatment is a bit easier to find; according to the Associated Press, until the recent legislative efforts, “open competition was really the only constraint on the number of clinics in Georgia.” There are 71 treatment centers in Georgia, more than anywhere else in the South.

AP reports that “Last year, one in five people treated at an opioid treatment center in Georgia came from out of state, according to state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities records obtained by the Associated Press under an open records request. In the northwest corner of Georgia [near the Tennessee border], two out of every three patients were from out of state.”

It’s not that Georgia has a robust public health system; 22 percent of adults in the state have no insurance. Neither Georgia nor Tennessee joined the Medicaid expansion offered under the Affordable Care Act. But even though their overall healthcare system isn’t necessarily better than Tennessee’s, looser regulation encourages people to come to Georgia’s clinics. Georgia spends 14.4 percent of its state budget on addiction and substance abuse, and two percent of that amount on prevention and treatment.

Both states are alarmed by elements of the proposed American Health Care Act. One version of that bill eliminated the option offered by ACA for people to enroll in Medicaid specifically for substance abuse treatment, even if their state did not accept the federal expansion. Sixty-four percent of addiction treatment centers in the U.S. accept Medicaid, though most of these are concentrated in New England, California, Chicago, and Detroit.

Georgians are concerned about cost and safety when out-of-area patients come to treatment centers, officials say. Catoosa County Sheriff Gary Sisk said, “We can’t be the solution for all the surrounding states,” and expressed concerns about potential crime increases. (Fortunately for Sheriff Sisk, a 2016 report in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found more crime associated with convenience stores than with opioid treatment programs.)

NPQ has written about the opioid epidemic affecting the entire U.S. and the insufficient congressional efforts to address it. U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary Tom Price recently promised an additional half billion dollars in state grants for prevention and treatment programs. However, that money may not help afflicted Tennesseans—or Georgians, or Texans, or anyone else—if regulations and limited Medicaid access strangle the ability of treatment centers to help their patients. NPQ has also written about the lack of philanthropy in the Deep South, where it seems like some serious advocacy and education on this issue is needed.

Georgia’s plan for limiting treatment tourism is legislation similar to Tennessee’s, which requires programs to demonstrate a need for their services in the area where they plan to open. (Given the statistics, this seems like it shouldn’t limit clinics at the moment, but it’s been effective in Tennessee.) If the legislation passes and is effective, nonprofits in the area may need to step up funding and efforts to deal with the patients left behind.— Erin Rubin

Share8
Share2
Email
Tweet

About The Author
Erin Rubin

Erin Rubin is an assistant editor at the Nonprofit Quarterly, where she is in charge of online editorial coordination and community building. Before joining NPQ, in 2016, Erin worked as an administrator at Harvard Business School and as an editorial project manager at Pearson Education, where she helped develop a digital resource library for remedial learners. Erin has also worked with David R. Godine, Publishers, and the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. As a creative lead with the TEDxBeaconStreet organizing team, she worked to help innovators and changemakers share their groundbreaking ideas and turn them into action.

Related
The Trump Administration Tries to Regulate the ACA Away
By Martin Levine
December 11, 2020
Overdose Deaths Appear to Spike in Pandemic’s Wake
By Ruth McCambridge
December 4, 2020
McKinsey’s Values-less Consulting: Time for Philanthropy to Cut Them Loose?
By Martin Levine
December 2, 2020
Georgia’s Senate Runoffs Have Climate Emergency on the Ballot
By Marian Conway
November 23, 2020
Stay Mad: The Path to Freedom in the US Runs through the South
By Will Cordery and Steph Guilloud
November 17, 2020
History Is Present in the Voting Booth: The Making of a Values Revolution
By Nathaniel Smith
November 17, 2020

Upcoming Webinars

Group Created with Sketch.
January 21, 2 pm ET

Remaking the Economy

Health, Racial Disparities, and Economic Justice

other posts by The Author
Law Students Call on States to Suspend the Bar—for Equity...
By Erin Rubin
July 28, 2020
Oklahoma Is Indian Country, Says SCOTUS—Now What?
By Erin Rubin
July 13, 2020
The Arrogance Trap: Why Elites Can’t Learn and Could Doom...
By Erin Rubin
June 24, 2020
CYNDI SUAREZ
The Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap: Flipping the Lens
Powerful Interests Seek to Make Puerto Rico the Hong Kong of the...
Moving Beyond the Privilege of White Tears
logo
Donate