US President Donald Trump pumps his fist after addressing the crowd during his swearing-in ceremony on January 20, 2017 .
The inauguration address of the 45th President of these United States of America was a departure from the past as some have noted.
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That’s not too surprising given the person at the center of it all. But President Donald Trump’s speech was notable for what it contained as well as what was absent: healthcare and the opioid crisis.
Consider this passage that provides the rationale for his ascent:
At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction, that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public.
But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.
This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
Historians and critics will analyze this passage endlessly given the choice of the word “carnage.” Especially when placed against the fact that the nationally, crime is down (take this fun test to see whether your perception matches reality) as are poverty levels.
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Still, that’s cold comfort to the people of rural, industrial, and white America who catapulted him and whose suffering is real and their anger at not sharing in the wider prosperity, palpable.
But where was Mr. Trump’s vow to root out the opioid crisis that has disproportionately affected those communities as the bold claim to exterminate radical Islamic terrorism from the face of our planet?
There are probably no stats out there, but most rational people would argue that in the current environment, death from an opioid overdose is likely a bigger threat than death from a terrorist attack, Islamic or not. (In fact there is a stat out there that shows that there are more drug overdose-related deaths than death due to guns.) In the same vein, chronic illness might more easily claim a life than a deranged, America-hating terrorist.
Were the divisions between Mr. Trump’s vision and his party too strong that led to healthcare and the opioid crisis not even deserving of a mention in his first address as president?
At MedCity News, we will be closely following the Trump administration’s efforts to reset the Affordable Care Act. But to make America First, a phrase repeated in the speech, and to heal the people left behind whom he so powerfully addressed on Friday, the 45th U.S. President will need to get to the root of the problem that has created the opioid epidemic, and fix the healthcare access and care delivery issues tied to it.
And perhaps Mr. Trump can also use his bully pulpit to imbue people caught in the cycle of addiction with the deeply American ethic of taking responsibility for one’s actions. In a similar vein like his predecessor did when he asked black fathers to step and take responsibility for the children first as a senator running for president in 2008 and then again in 2013.
It’s no mean task. Good luck, Mr. President.
Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
