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States that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act have seen a much bigger increase in prescriptions for a medication that treats opioid addiction than states that chose not to expand the program, a new study has found. The study, by researchers at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research group, adds to the evidence that the 2010 health care law is playing a significant role in addressing the opioid epidemic. (Goodnough, 8/21)

The number of prescriptions for the opioid addiction treatment drug buprenorphine for people on Medicaid in New Hampshire has more than quadrupled since 2011, according to a new report. The report from the Urban Institute shows that in 2011, about 8,000 prescriptions for buprenorphine were written for people on Medicaid in New Hampshire. (Moon, 8/21)

West Virginia University President Gordon Gee and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich are creating a nonprofit that will fight to steer cash from any national opioid settlement to hospitals, rather than to local and state governments already sparring for control of the dollars. Gee and Kasich say Citizens for Effective Opioid Treatment, a 501(c)4 organization to be announced Thursday, will educate policymakers and the public about the negative impact the opioid epidemic has had on health care infrastructure and advance health-related research solutions to the crisis. (Carr Smyth, 8/22)

Jason was hallucinating. He was withdrawing from drugs at an addiction treatment center near Indianapolis, and he had hardly slept for several days. "He was reaching for things, and he was talking to Bill Gates and he was talking to somebody else I'm just certain he hasn't met," his mother, Cheryl, says. She remembers finding Jason lying on the floor of the treatment center in late 2016. "I would just bring him blankets because they didn't have beds or anything." (Harper, 8/22)