Upcoming Fiscal Year Portends a Bleak Future for Addiction Treatment Providers, Those in Need of Care

As I watched Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro give his budget address last Tuesday, it occurred to me that the light Pennsylvania government had brightly shined on the addiction epidemic for nearly the past 10 years has greatly dimmed.

In a speech of nearly 11,000 words, not one of them was “addiction.” Not one mention of treatment. No mention at all of an overdose death epidemic. Over the course of a 90-minute budget address, Gov. Shapiro, a man who likes to “get stuff done,” did not even attempt to take credit for overdose death numbers that are trending downward. He didn’t acknowledge them at all.

Granted, the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs (DDAP) continues to release pots of opioid settlement and federal money, including State Opioid Response (SOR) funding, into the behavioral health ecosystem, though not all of it is available to DDAP-licensed treatment providers. Counties also continue to spend opioid settlement dollars from multiple sources, including a national settlement with the three largest pharmaceutical distributors that netted more than $1 billion for Pennsylvania. [Read the full blog post here.]