A group of senators have introduced legislation that would allow hospitals to take in more people who are struggling with opioid addictions.
The provision was left out of a larger bill that the Senate passed on Monday, but supporters hope that it will be included when senators meet with House lawmakers to hash out the final policy. Under current Medicaid rules, hospitals cannot allow more than 16 addiction or mental illness patients to stay with them at a time. Estimates have shown that removing that limit could cost $60 billion over a decade.
The bed limit policy was implemented decades ago as a way to avoid institutionalization for people with mental illness or substance abuse disorders. Lawmakers who supported it had instead aimed to have more people receive care from community-based centers, but those never materialized.
The Improving Coverage for Addiction Recovery Expansion Act would undo the ban and was introduced Tuesday by Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.
The Trump administration has allowed certain states to lift the ban, but supporters say that people hooked on opioids, such as prescription painkillers or heroin, need to have more options for treatment. The ban has created long lines for medical care at a time when more than 40,000 people a year are dying from opioid overdoses.
The exclusion would apply not only to treatment for an opioid addiction, but to all types of addictions. This differs from the bill passed by the House, which would have allowed hospitals to bill Medicaid only for treating addictions to cocaine and to opioids. The Senate bill would make the repeal on the ban permanent, while the House legislation applies for five years. The Senate bill also allows patients to stay in the hospital for up to 90 days, rather than its current 30-day limit.
Hospitals would need to show that they are using medications to treat addictions and that they have a plan in place that allows patients to continue checking in with providers once they have been discharged.
Undoing the hospital bed limit is “one of the most important things we can to do expand access to treatment right now for those who truly need it … we should not let this opportunity pass us by,” Portman said in a statement.
[Also read: Roseanne Barr says her TV character killed off by opioid overdose]
