LANSING — Michigan health officials say that the state could lose tens of millions of dollars in federal support for drug treatment due to current and proposed Trump administration policies.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services says that more than $90 million in federal funding could be at risk, nearly a third of the state’s total budget for addiction treatment.
“What worries me is, how will that derail our plans? How will that impact the progress we’ve made so far? And I do not want Michigan to take a step backwards,” said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical officer of Michigan.
The potential cuts come at a time when most measures of opioid use in the US and Michigan have been improving. Last year, national overdose deaths dropped 27%, while Michigan saw a projected 34% decrease.
Experts say that lowering investments into support programs could reverse some of those gains.
Bagdasarian says that federal funding has likely made its largest impact through the distribution of Narcan kits.
Over 90% of Narcan kits in Michigan are paid for by the federal government, potentially risking a rise in deadly overdoses if those funds are cut.
“If we lose some of that funding, if we lose access to naloxone in the way that we’ve been able to harness it over the last few years, we could definitely take some steps back,” she said.
MDHHS says that they’ve distributed more than 1.3 million Narcan kits in the last few years, at least 34,000 of which have been used to avoid a potentially fatal overdose.
Experts that the losses in federal funding would be difficult to make up from other sources.
“I don’t think that it is reasonable to think that the state would be able to pick up a large portion of what the federal government was funding,” said Norm Hess, executive director of the Michigan Association for Local Public Health. “I think there’s no doubt that this level of cuts in federal funding can jeopardize individuals’ recovery”
The cuts are a result of the shrinking of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which will be absorbed into another agency.
Bagdasarian says that the state could step in to fill some of the gaps left by federal cuts, but says that they too are working with limited resources.
“Anything that we are doing today to fill federal gaps means less money tomorrow to fill the needs of of Michigan residents, as we go through this together,” she said.