WASHINGTON — Amanda Hall of Lawrence County was addicted to opioids when she went to prison on drug trafficking charges in her 20s, she said.

What You Need To Know

  • Kentucky is authorized to extend coverage under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to people scheduled to be released from prison or juvenile detention facilities 

  • The coverage will take effect up to 60 days before their release

  • Kentucky must submit an implementation plan for review and approval by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

  • Advocates said the change will save lives 

Once incarcerated, Hall said she lost access to Medicaid and the medication she was using to treat her substance use disorder and continued using drugs upon her release.

“Being incarcerated in and of itself, it’s traumatic, so I continued to use drugs … I relapsed,” Hall said. “I wish that I had already while I was incarcerated, at least started that treatment journey.”

This summer, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services made Kentucky one of the latest states authorized to extend coverage under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to people scheduled to be released from prison or juvenile detention facilities.

The coverage will take effect up to 60 days before their release.

Kentucky must submit an implementation plan for review and approval by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services before the program can go into effect. After that plan is approved, the state will cover a select set of health care services, according to the state’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

To qualify for coverage, adults and juveniles must be eligible for Medicaid or the Kentucky Children’s Health Insurance Program, the cabinet said.

“I think the 1115 waiver in Kentucky, that’s a huge step forward,” Hall said. “There’s still so much more work to do because reentry really starts the first day you’re in there. But again, it’s a big step forward.”

Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said two-thirds of people who are in custody have a substance use disorder but it often doesn't get treated while they are incarcerated.  

“This will be important not only to help people get treatment like any other disease, help people save their life, but also that … helps them get back to work and not be reincarcerated, so it's also a very important economic tool that helps local communities as well,” he said.

Hall has now been in recovery for more than 12 years and is currently working on a campaign to reduce overdose deaths for the organization Dream.org, where she works as the senior director of national campaigns.  

While Medicaid coverage will save lives, there’s still a lot more work to do to ensure people get the kind of help she needed during and after incarceration, she said.

Related Stories