Obamacare starts bringing relief to low-income drug addicts

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New coverage pays for drug addiction treatment services like Methadone, but access to detox centers remains limited.

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Tamara Nunez at the Matrix Institute (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need access to the original image.)

“It’s Dark Thirty out there,” says Tamara Nunez after I follow her into Matrix Institute, a clean but shabby two-story addiction clinic in Mid-City Los Angeles. It’s Five-Thirty A.M. and even though the sun is just coming up, ten patients are already waiting in line. Nunez is dressed in a rainbow blouse ready to start her day.

“I wake up every morning, 5 o’clock my eyes are open and I just come down here, I dose, and I go home for a couple hours,” she says. “I go to work late in the afternoon.”

At the reception window, she recites her 4 digit patient number. She’s buzzed to a nurse’s station, where a computer disburses a liquid dose of medicine: a small cup of the prescription opiate, Methadone.

“It’s working for me. Some people call Methadone just another addicting drug, but it’s what works for me. It’s legal. I’m not in any trouble. I’m not out there on the street trying to get money.”

Nunez, 56, started using heroin 30 years ago. She lost her job, her family, and her house. Now, she’s stable and has been mostly clean for nine years. But she had another problem: No health insurance. She couldn’t afford it and she didn’t qualify for Medi-Cal, the state’s version of the Medicaid program. So she had trouble paying for her Methadone.

“I know that if I didn’t have the Methadone where I’d be: I’d be sticking a needle in my arm, probably getting some disease by now… So Obamacare it helped me a lot.” — Tamara Nunez, 56

That all changed in January when Nunez became eligible for Medi-Cal thanks to the Affordable Care Act. Now her Methadone is covered.

“I know that if I didn’t have the Methadone where I’d be: I’d be sticking a needle in my arm, probably getting some disease by now, so Obamacare it really helped me a lot.”