The pandemic has led to regulatory changes: Treatment can now be entirely virtual, including the first appointment. Medicare now pays providers the same for a video appointment as a conventional one — many insurers and Medicaid programs have followed. Patients can get a month’s prescription for buprenorphine instead of just a week’s.

Forty percent of American counties — much of Appalachia, for example — have no providers licensed to prescribe buprenorphine, the most successful treatment so far.

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