Livingston County commissioners are weighing a resolution that would pay a private firm about $75,000 in its first year to comb through county employees' health insurance claims looking for early warning signs of opioid addiction. The proposal, backed by Commissioner Wes Nakagiri, would bring a program called Opioid Free America into the county's health plan for two years, with an option to extend it a third.
What the Program Would Do
Under the plan, Livingston County would hand over employees' health insurance claims data, including coverage for family members on the county's plan, to Opioid Free America, according to CBS News Detroit. The company says it shares only de-identified data that excludes names, addresses, and other identifying information, and that the program complies with HIPAA law. Nakagiri has said the goal is to catch potential opioid use disorder before it develops, rather than waiting until someone is already struggling with addiction.
Opioid Free America was co-founded by Dr. Matt McCord, an anesthesiologist and former U.S. Air Force Medical Corps Major who lives in Brighton, Michigan, according to the company's own account of its founder. McCord presented an analysis of Livingston County's health plan data to the county's Finance and Asset Management Committee during an April meeting, laying the groundwork for the resolution now before the full board. The company's analytical tools are designed to search for signs of potential opioid use disorder before it develops and to encourage prescribers to wean patients off opioids once red flags appear.
Commissioner's Case for the Program
Nakagiri, who proposed the resolution, has argued that most people's first exposure to opioids comes through a prescription, and that prevention efforts remain far less common than programs aimed at treating opioid use disorder after the fact. He has framed the county's role as trying to stop routine prescriptions from becoming the starting point for addiction. If the board approves the resolution, it would run for two years, with the option for commissioners to extend it a third.
Opioid Free America markets AI-driven analytics software that it claims can reduce high-risk opioid prescribing by 60% to 75% and generate 3% to 5% in overall savings on employer health plan spending, according to the company's own marketing materials. Those figures have not been independently verified in the dossier record and represent the vendor's own performance claims to prospective health plan administrators.
Advocates Question Duplication With State System
Recovery advocates in Livingston County have pushed back, arguing that a similar opioid prescription monitoring program already exists at the state level. Under Michigan Public Acts 248 and 249 of 2017, every licensed prescriber in the state has been legally required since June 1, 2018, to check the Michigan Automated Prescription System before writing a prescription for a controlled substance lasting longer than three days. That system, known as MAPS, tracks controlled substances and assesses patient risk across all Michigan pharmacies.
Michigan also gives residents another tool advocates point to: under Public Act 554 of 2018, patients or their legal guardians can file a Non-Opioid Directive form asking healthcare providers to withhold opioid prescriptions during treatment. Livingston County administrators and the county's Health Advisory Committee discussed plans in April to integrate those directive flags directly into county 911 dispatch, so first responders could see a patient's opioid preference during emergency medical calls.
Settlement Money and Local Numbers
The debate over the new program comes as Livingston County continues distributing its own dedicated opioid settlement funds. In July 2025, the county Board of Commissioners authorized initial agreements from Fund 284, approving up to $50,000 each for Recovery Advocates in Livingston, the Livingston County Area Alano Club, and The Brighton Center. Michigan counties and municipalities are slated to receive roughly $725 million of the state's total $1.8 billion national opioid settlement allocation through 2040, according to WHMI.
The stakes locally are not abstract. Livingston County emergency medical services and health officials recorded 423 resident hospital emergency visits or admissions for opioid intoxication between March 2020 and April 2024, per county health department data. Statewide, the trend has moved in a more encouraging direction: opioid overdose deaths in Michigan fell 34% between 2023 and 2024, dropping from 2,287 to 1,342 deaths, as CBS News Detroit reported, a decline officials attribute in part to expanded prevention and harm-reduction funding.
Whether the new $75,000 program would draw from the county's general fund or from its opioid settlement allocation remains an open question the board has yet to publicly resolve. Commissioners have not yet voted on the resolution, and the debate over whether the private analytics program duplicates existing state infrastructure is likely to continue as the proposal moves forward.
