ArcaMax

Except, Adkins went on to point out, "nothing has changed ... at all ... whatsoever. We are responding to every call and rendering aid as needed. We give Narcan where it is appropriate. Period." Narcan, also known by the generic name Naloxone, blocks the effects of opioids in overdose patients.

Yet one of the reasons why Picard's idea went viral is that it coincided the Senate considering a Republican-backed measure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

In his quest to secure 51 votes, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell added $45 billion in additional funding to combat the opioid crisis. The move aimed to attract the votes of moderate Republican Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.

The initial version of the bill provided only $2 billion in state grants to address the crisis. But both Portman and Capito were even more concerned about the deep cuts that original legislation would make to Medicaid, cuts that the Congressional Budget Office estimates would take $772 billion from Medicaid and coverage away from 15 million people.

Ohio's Republican Gov. John Kasich said last week that he warned Portman that even the $45 billion wouldn't come close to making up for the damage caused by the Medicaid cuts in the bill.

An earlier analysis by Richard Frank and Sherry Glied of New York University also estimated that the Senate Republican bill would cost 2.8 million Americans help with their drug use disorders and almost 1.3 million with serious mental disorders, if those Obamacare benefits were not restored.

That puts Congress in a position not unlike leaders back in Middletown and other towns in similar predicaments. Both have to make life or death decisions about their resources in the face of an opioid crisis, except the local folks happen to live and work closer to those who need the help.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)

(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.