Debra Miller

Last week, the U.S. Senate passed a drug abuse prevention and treatment bill 94-1. The New York Times reported it is the biggest bill on the topic since 2008, when Congress mandated insurance coverage for addiction treatment.

The overwhelming bi-partisan support for the bill underlined the growing attention to the very real increase in overdose deaths due to prescription drug abuse and heroin use. Governors talked with President Obama about the same topic during the National Governors’ Association meeting in February. In a CSG analysis of 2016 governors' state of the state addresses, substance abuse and drug overdoses figured prominantly as key themes. 

A February 2016 CSG Capitol Research Brief provides the latest data on overdose deaths by state. Fourteen states had a statistically significant increase in overdose deaths from prescription drug abuse and heroin use from 2013 to 2014, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

A new study published in the British health journal Lancet presents the strongest case to date that the Zika virus is linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome, which causes temporary paralysis. The study retrospectively looked at 42 cases of Guillain-Barré in French Polynesia that occurred between October 2013 and April 2014, the same time that French Polynesia experienced the largest Zika virus outbreak ever described at that time. While the research could not conclude that Zika was the cause of the Guillain-Barré cases, it strongly links the two. 

A new poll finds that 43 percent of Americans are worried that there will be a large number of Zika cases this year. Fewer (28 percent) worry that they or a family member will become infected, according to the Feb. 25 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Last week, two states rejected Medicaid expansion, another is continuing negotiations with Washington and one is studying whether and how to continue expansion already in place and reduce the numbers of people eligible. Currently 31 states and the District of Columbia have expanded income eligibility for Medicaid as provided for by the Affordable Care Act. Sixteen states remain firmly in the non-expansion column.