It's often difficult to reconcile the differences between what we see in health care and what Republicans tell us about their policies and plans to make it better.
Treatment help for the nation's rampant and growing opioid addiction crisis is no exception.
On Thursday, the disconnect came right to Chattanooga when U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price toured CADAS, one of the largest nonprofit addiction treatment facilities in Tennessee - a state that has the nation's fifth highest rate of opioid use and abuse.
"With the president's incredible support and commitment to solving this challenge, we have made the opioid crisis one of our top three medical priorities in our department," said Price, who also is a physician.
Meanwhile back in Washington, GOP creators of the Senate and House efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, claim the GOP reform plans could trim federal Medicaid spending - the same Medicaid spending that among other things pays for many people to get drug treatment.
Further, those "reform" efforts would allow states to weaken the current mandate in Obamacare for commercial insurers to cover drug treatment as an essential service, even for those covered by employer-offered plans.
GOP health care policy planners would make those changes and others to trim more than $800 billion in federal spending over a decade so they can give about $600 billion in tax breaks to the richest individuals and corporations in the country.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, facing backlash and the fact that he didn't have enough votes for the plan to pass before lawmakers left Washington for summer break, tried to sweeten the pot last week by increasing funding for opioid addiction programs to $45 billion after the Senate's original bill to repeal and replace Obamacare allocated only $2 billion.
And Price, here in Chattanooga on Thursday, insisted the Trump administration is committed to fighting the opioid epidemic.
"The president is absolutely resolute to make sure that every American has access to coverage and treatment that they need - whether it is through the Medicaid system, the Veterans Administration, employer-sponsored plans or individual coverage," Price said. "Whatever happens, we are strongly supportive of making sure that individuals have that kind of coverage."
Clearly this is a dollars and sense disconnect. Access to insurance that may cost as much as half of one's yearly income does not equate to coverage.
In 2015, the most recent year for which figures are available, more than 52,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses or related problems in the United States, including nearly 1,500 in Tennessee.
The federal government already is pumping more money into local projects under the 21st Century Cures Act adopted by the GOP-controlled Congress. Under that act, Tennessee gets an additional $13.8 million in the new fiscal year that began Friday. Tennessee has allocated more than $6 million in state funds to match the federal dollars to support local treatment programs, including those offered by CADAS.
Outside on the sidewalk as Price talked at CADAS, two protesters held four signs in support of saving health care benefits under the current law.
To his credit, our Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker engaged with them.
Anna Grabowski, 63, asked why Congress members didn't draft a single-payer health care reform plan. Corker didn't answer, but protester Eric Reese, 37, asked the senator, in essence, why the GOP bill is simply too harsh for the poor and the deathly ill. To that, Corker did respond.
"There is no attempt to do away with the pre-existing condition issue (in place under the Affordable Care Act). There is an attempt right now to build up the subsidy level so that people who are lower income can actually purchase health care."
Corker didn't talk about the provision that allows state governments to weaken the pre-existing condition mandate by allowing insurers to charge higher rates for those conditions and/or to cover less - like not cover insulin or chemotherapy treatments. Health care experts call these "backdoor" cuts to the pre-existing condition mandate, and because the financially strapped states would do the dirty work, Congress apparently thinks it won't be blamed.
Later a Corker spokesman told the Times Free Press that the Senate bill needs to become more generous for the poor - people like Reese who says his income from delivering pizzas is about $8,000.
Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander also has said the Senate bill needs to provide more assistance to the poor, perhaps in block grants to states - the same states that could weaken the terms of insurance coverage.
On the street here Thursday, Reese made a completely reasonable demand of Sen. Corker:
"Do right by us," he said to his elected representative.
"All right," Corker said. "I will."
We hope so. We're watching.