Methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin aren’t the only drugs plaguing Athens County.
Some Athens County residents who have health insurance go to their doctor, complain of symptoms, get a prescription and then sell the pills, officials said.
But being that the Affordable Care Act requires people to have health insurance or face a fine, it opens the door for two possible scenarios.
With more people insured, less abuse could occur because people who currently get their drugs illegally would have a legal route through their new insurance. Or the opposite happens and more people, now able to see a doctor, abuse the system.
People who can’t afford prescription pills resort to abusing the system and selling drugs, said Ben Holter, pharmacy manager at The Drugstore at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital.
“We hope that people don’t try to abuse the system, but we know that they do,” Holter said. “As a pharmacist, we see a fair amount of abuse to the system. There’s just no way around it.”
Currently, Holter said, when people can’t afford medications, they get other people with health insurance to lie to doctors, essentially obtaining valuable drugs without paying for them.
“Doctors are always willing to help people out who say they’re in pain, but how do you measure that? You can’t turn them away,” Holter said. “You’d hope that (the doctors) would be diligent about the system, but people find ways around it.”
Holter said O’Bleness has turned a lot of people away because of an increase in prescription pill abuse.
“We turn down a lot of prescriptions from doctors we’re not familiar with or from people coming from out of state,” he said.
Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly said that Oxycodone is a common drug that people are abusing through Medicaid or Medicare.
“I think the biggest concern in this whole thing is who’s going to pay for this whole thing?” Kelly said. “The taxpayers are going to have to pay for it.”
Although prescription pill abuse is a large problem in Athens County, Kelly said the drug epidemic has hurt the county since before the new health care law, known as “Obamacare,” existed.
“The only people ‘Obamacare’ will affect are the people selling prescription drugs,” he said. “I believe that we’ll see a spike in the number of people that are receiving benefits and get prescription drugs and sell them for their own profit.”
But Gov. John Kasich recently proposed a Medicaid legislation that would expand the program to include more Ohioans, which some say would help combat prescription pill abuse.
More than 3,500 people between ages 19 and 64 will be enrolled with Medicaid if the expansion goes through, according to a study by the Health Policy Institute of Ohio, a nonpartisan health care think-tank.
The new legislation would extend Medicaid coverage to adults making up to $15,856 a year — 138 percent of the poverty level — with the exception of those with children or disabilities, for example.
Nick Claussen, of the Athens County Jobs and Family Services, said that prescription drug abuse is clearly a problem in Athens County and that the new legislation, if passed, would help a great deal.
“If there’s more health care, and it’s expanded, then it’ll help people,” he said.
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@XanderZellner
