Grits for Breakfast 4/4/2018
The Texas House Select Committee on Opiods and Substance Abuse
posted handouts from their March 27 hearing, and Grits thought it worthwhile to point out a few highlights. See in particular handouts from:
Texas Legislative Budget Board Texas Department of Criminal Justice Meadows FoundationLet's do a quick overview of substance abuse resources in Texas, then try to answer a couple of questions raised by the Texas District and County Attorneys Association on their Twitter feed.
For starters, funding for substance abuse in Texas comes primarily from two sources: Medicaid and TDCJ. Between them, those two sources account for 97.4 percent of all government substance-abuse funding in the state, split roughly equally, reported LBB. Just more than $386 million are spent on SA treatment through Medicaid, while around $343 million is spent on treatment through TDCJ.
The difference, though, is where state money is spent. Overall, 58 percent of funds spent on substance abuse come from state general revenue coffers. But most of that is spent on treatment in corrections environments. Overall, state general revenue funds pay for only 24 percent of Medicaid expenditures on substance abuse, but more than 98 percent of treatment funds at TDCJ.
With a total incarcerated population of 145,399, TDCJ has 10,047 incarceration beds dedicated to substance abuse, and the parole system has 7,592 people on specialized substance abuse caseloads.
More:
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2018/04/texas-overdose-problem-still-more.html
