Editor:

This National Recovery Month, Kentucky State Representative Bobby McCool decided to write about addiction recovery. While he is right that substance abuse is one of Kentucky’s biggest challenges, the truth is that the challenge is about to get even bigger.

Most Kentuckians have seen firsthand how difficult it can be to help someone fight addiction. We have seen loved ones refuse treatment, relapse, get arrested or even overdose. Thanks largely to bipartisan action, local nonprofits and recovery facilities fueled by Medicaid, more people are starting to heal. But as a direct result of actions taken by members of McCool’s party, all of that progress is now at risk.

Extreme Medicaid cuts are coming. If you live outside of Louisville or Lexington, you are going to lose health care facilities, along with all of the recovery services they currently provide. People are going to lose health insurance. People are going to lose jobs. People are going to lose hope.

While McCool was right to praise the Recovery Ready initiative, passed by Democrats and Republicans to equip all parts of Kentucky with tools they need to get people sober, none of the counties under his watch have been certified. If he truly supports the life-changing programs he wrote about, he should be doing more to make sure they — and their patients — will still be here tomorrow.

Today, we are losing addiction recovery services to President Trump’s health care agenda. In Lexington, Optimal Living Services shut down explicitly because of lost Medicaid funding. In Eastern Kentucky, one of the state’s largest addiction recovery networks just closed five treatment facilities.

Dozens of our neighbors lost jobs. Even more lost access to treatment that would otherwise be helping them stay sober, out of jail and able to provide for their families.

Unfortunately for the 97th District, McCool’s silence is part of a larger pattern. He and other Republicans in our state legislature have done nothing to protect Kentuckians from the rural health care crisis or President Trump’s broken funding promises.

McCool did nothing when Trump’s federal government took millions from the Pike County School District, leaving one of the poorest counties in the state on the hook for the cost of 12 new classrooms and a cafeteria. He did nothing to stop his fellow Republicans from approving the greatest cut to rural health care funding in history.

So far, he has done nothing to make sure his constituents can still see a doctor if Pike County’s Tug Valley ARH shuts down. It’s one of 35 rural Kentucky hospitals scrambling to find ways to stay open past 2027, all because of Trump’s so-called beautiful budget.  But there is still time for McCool and other Republicans to join Democrats in reversing the damage and setting us back on the path toward healing.

McCool should spend less time writing about programs that help Kentuckians get off drugs and more time protecting them. It takes both sides of the aisle to make a dent in addiction.

The people of the 97th District deserve a representative who will stand up for them, no matter who sits in the Oval Office. Without one, we won’t just be losing treatment centers, jobs or even hospitals. We will be losing lives.

Nicholas Hazelett
Chair of Johnson County Democratic Party