When Coverage Gets Cut, Overdoses Increase

When health insurance becomes conditional and unaffordable, it doesn’t just disappear from balance sheets—it vanishes from people’s lives at the moment they need it most. The expiration of enhanced ACA Marketplace subsidies is not a technical policy lapse but a predictable accelerator of opioid use disorder and overdose deaths, exposing how coverage gaps, economic stress, and fragmented care combine to turn preventable suffering into fatal outcomes.