Axios

"We can be the generation that ends the opioid epidemic," President Trump said yesterday. But there's broad agreement among public health experts that the plan Trump released isn't enough to get there.

The bottom line: The steps Trump announced yesterday will help, experts say. At a minimum, they won't hurt. But they're not enough. To tackle this public health crisis, the administration will need a more complete strategy and a lot of money.

Opioid-related deaths in the United States have increased across the board between 1999-2015, according to data from the Centers for Disease control. This chart shows how the number of deaths per 100,000 has ballooned across all age and sex groups.

Federal officials Thursday indicted John Kapoor, the 74-year-old billionaire founder and majority owner of drug company Insys Therapeutics. They alleged Kapoor and other Insys executives bribed doctors to prescribe the company's powerful fentanyl spray, called Subsys, to a wide array of patients — even though the medication is only intended for cancer patients.

Why it matters: CEOs and other top executives almost never get arrested for alleged misdeeds.

President Trump will deliver a speech at 2 p.m. in the East Room of the White House on combatting drug demand and the opioid crisis. "Trump will order his health secretary to declare the opioid crisis a public health emergency [today] — but will stop short of declaring a more sweeping state of national emergency," USA Today reports.

Trump to Lou Dobbs of Fox Business, yesterday: "Next week, I'm going to declaring an emergency, national emergency on drugs. The opioid is a tremendous emergency, what's going on there. The drugs pouring into the country have gotten -- and I tell you what, we've made a big impact. But still, we need the wall. You know, part of the reason we need the wall is for drugs."

Health care mergers and acquisitions slowed a bit over the summer, but the industry still has kept bankers and consultants busy since the Affordable Care Act went into effect. The health care industry has initiated more than 200 deals per quarter for 12 straight quarters, including 211 in the third quarter of 2017, according to a report from PwC.