New York Democratic House candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN's "State of the Union" that Medicare for All would act not as "a short-term bandaid," but as a "generational investment" that would ultimately save the American people money.
The big picture: Ocasio-Cortez and many of the progressive Democratic candidates running in 2018 have made single-payer health care, which would cost about $32.6 trillion over its first 10 years, a central tenet of their campaigns. Polling suggests that a majority of both Democrats and Republicans support Medicare for All.
Trump administration officials believe efforts in fighting the opioid crisis are working, after a new government survey showed a decrease in the number of new heroin users, the Associated Press reports.
The details: There were 81,000 new heroin users in 2017, compared to 170,000 in 2016, the survey showed, and more people are seeking treatment for addiction. The amount o users in 2017 is "similar to the numbers...in 2002 through 2008," per the AP. But addiction researcher Brendan Saloner, at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the AP it's "hard to look at this and not think we need to be doing a better job than we're doing now."
