“If pharmacies are not seeing a steady stream coming in asking for it, they won’t be incentivized to carry it on their shelves,” said Daniel Raymond, the deputy director of policy and planning for the Harm Reduction Coalition.
A patchwork of other decentralized sources for naloxone exist: syringe-exchange vans, county and state health departments, churches and community centers, all trying to find ways to get overdose medication into the hands of people who need it.
That supply stream “meets people where they are,” Raymond said, but those little programs don’t have the muscle to negotiate discounted prices.
“Individual health programs are trying to navigate the crisis on their own, but when you see … growing demand and limited supply, it’s a role for federal intervention,” Raymond said.
He’d like to see the federal government step in to negotiate prices where smaller programs can’t.
The surgeon general’s message is one part of Washington’s broader response to the epidemic. But even as Congress crafts an opioid epidemic response package, it’s not clear it will tackle these concerns.
In the House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee, one bill being discussed would require all state Medicaid programs to cover at least one form of naloxone. Currently, not all state Medicaid programs do so.
A Senate bill would authorize $300 million annually to equip first responders with naloxone.
But critics say those approaches still don’t address the underlying problems: cost and funding.
“You can either make naloxone available, at a much discounted price, or we need to have a lot more resources in order to purchase it,” Wen said. “I don’t care which one. My only concern is the health and well-being of our residents.”
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.