By: Thomas Dishaw March 11, 2017
Heroin has flourished in West Virginia over the past decade, especially since officials cracked down on prescription drugs.
In 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
West Virginia’s drug overdose death rate stood at 41.5 cases per 100,000
residents, the highest rate in the country and nearly three times the national average.
This epidemic
is now causing a strain on funeral homes as well as a state funded
program that provides burial assistance for impoverished families. West
Virginia’s “Indigent Burial Program” has existed for decades, but with
the increase of heroin-related deaths, their resources are being
depleted at a faster rate. And as overdoses rise many funeral homes are
finding that they cannot keep up with the demand for services.
The Indigent Burial Program is a unique program because a majority of
states don’t provide such services at the state level, and most of the
ones that do, limit them to recipients of Medicaid, SNAP or other social
programs for the poor. Frederick Kitchen, president of the West
Virginia Funeral Directors Association, said the state Department of
Human Services earmarks almost $2 million a year to help cover the
burial costs for destitute individuals. The state offers funeral homes
$1,250 per person to cover expenses in cases where the deceased has no
funds nor anyone willing or able to pay the funeral costs. (RELATED: Get
all the news Google is trying to hide from you at Censored.news)
The program has paid for so many burials for citizens who have died
from drug overdoses that in 2014 they were out of money by June. In
2015, the program’s budget was completely drained by March. For this
current fiscal year set to end in June, 1,508 burials have already been
submitted for payment through the Indigent Burial Program, according to
Allison Adler, a spokesperson for state DHHR Secretary Bill Crouch. Read More
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