The House voted overwhelmingly on Friday in favor of a bill that sets new policies and reauthorizes hundreds of billions of dollars in federal grants in a bid to fight America’s opioid epidemic.
The SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act passed easily in a 393-8 vote, and will head to the Senate, where it is expected to be approved and then will head to President Trump’s desk. The legislation is a combination of bills that the House passed in June and a major package the Senate passed last week.
“We all know someone who lost a loved one because they were exposed to opioids and got addicted,” said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee on the House floor Friday.
The bill includes language aimed at curbing the opioid epidemic, which continues to roil American communities. In 2017, nearly 50,000 people died from a drug overdose, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
A majority of the policies, though, focus primarily on improving access to addiction treatment. A 2016 federal survey found that only one in 10 Americans with an addiction get treatment.
In addition to reauthorized grant funding, the legislation codifies an increase in the number of prescriptions a doctor can make for the drug buprenorphine, which is used to treat addiction, from 100 to 275. It also expands the type of healthcare provider that can prescribe the treatment, including nurse practitioners.
The legislation would repay student loans for people that agree to work in substance abuse treatment, and repeals a decades-old rule that prohibits hospitals from caring for more than 16 patients with drug abuse and mental health.
The legislation also requires Medicaid to cover all types of medication assisted treatment used to treat addiction, which include buprenorphine and methadone.
Currently, under Medicaid rules, hospitals cannot allow more than 16 patients with mental illnesses or addictions to stay at the hospital. Going over this limit endangers Medicaid reimbursements for the facility.
But another part of the legislation targets a growing problem: the widespread use of illicit fentanyl. Of the nearly 50,000 opioid overdose deaths in 2017, more than 30,000 were linked to fentanyl.
The STOP Act, included in the package, gives the U.S. Postal Service more tools to identify shipments of illicit fentanyl from overseas. The information could then be sent to customs agents to seize the shipments.
Congress found earlier this year that it is incredibly easy to buy fentanyl online, with a majority of the shipments of the powerful painkiller coming from China.
The legislation reauthorizes key grants to states hit hardest by the opioid epidemic, but it doesn’t include a lot of new funding for those grants. Instead, lawmakers are turning to appropriations bills to boost funding. This includes $6.7 billion in an appropriations bill that the House passed earlier this week.
But some treatment advocacy groups said that grants themselves are not enough, and that systemic changes to treatment payments are needed.
Some lawmakers said that the bill is a step in the right direction and much more is going to be needed.
“A lot more needs to be done to expand treatment and expand the treatment infrastructure,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., top Democrat on the House Energy & Commerce Committee.
