Rick Kastner, Executive Director of the Lancaster County Drug & Alcohol Commission, estimates there are between five thousand and ten thousand Lancastrians addicted to heroin.
About six hundred of them are receiving treatment with methadone at a clinic or Suboxone from a physician. This enables most to resume near normal life with family, friends and gainful employment. They may be your neighbor or co-worker. You wouldn’t know.
Another six hundred could be treated if local physicians were willing to accept them as patients. But the doctors won’t, largely because fees are low and these patients are mistakenly deemed undesirable.
Lancaster General, a non-profit institution, earned $113 million last year.
For a subsidy of a quarter of a million dollars a year, Lancaster General Hospital could provide a full time clinic to treat 600 more with Suboxone.
A recent study by the federal government established that half of men arrested tested positive for drugs. The savings to society in health care, law enforcement, and welfare would be many times the investment.
It’s the public’s $113 million, largely resulting from the high cost most of us pay for health insurance. For the sake of the public, Lancaster General should use a tiny fraction of those earnings to provide space and a doctor and nurse for a Suboxone clinic, even if they cannot recoup all of the cost from government, insurance and private sources.
