A House panel is ironing out how many bills to advance to the full House to combat the opioid epidemic.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is scheduled next week to mark up legislation to tackle the opioid epidemic. Committee leaders are now determining how many bills it plans to consider during the markup scheduled for April 25.
The panel’s health subcommittee has held three legislative hearings on more than 60 bills. But the committee hasn’t decided how many will actually move through the panel.
“It will be a lot of them,” Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., told the Washington Examiner Wednesday. “I don’t want to peg it right now because we are working on it.”
Walden said the committee likely would hold one markup on opioid legislation.
The bills considered during the legislative hearings focus on various facets aimed at curbing opioid abuse. Some legislation introduces changes to Medicare and Medicaid while others seek to bolster enforcement tools to target sales of illegal opioids.
Walden has said he wants to get the legislation through the House before the week-long Memorial Day recess set to start May 25. That gives the committee 16 legislative days.
Democrats have been supportive of most of the proposals but have expressed concerns about the quick pace of considering the legislation.
“I am concerned that the sheer quantity of bills and the chairman’s ambitious timeframe will not give us enough time to get these policies right,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., during a legislative hearing this month. Pallone is the top Democrat on the committee.
But Democrats are likely to support the bipartisan effort.
“There is so much support, and we all recognize that we need to address it,” said Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas, who is the top Democrat on the health subcommittee. “No matter how we get there. But I would like to have bipartisanship because we share the same goals.”
But Green said he had some questions about what will happen to the bills once they get through the House.
“I joked with [health subcommittee chairman] Mike Burgess, ‘Are we gonna send 60 bills over to the Senate?’” he said. “I would have to be here 10 years before they could pass it.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he intends to largely focus during this election year on nominee confirmations.
But the Senate is doing its own work on opioids. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on April 24 will consider the Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018. The bill would reauthorize and improve grants for states to treat opioid abuse and push for development of nonaddictive painkillers, among other items.
Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said that there likely will be a package coming out of the Senate that would not be just HELP’s bill.
“We will have to put the bills together in the Senate because you have the [Senate] Finance Committee and Judiciary [Committee] who also have important ideas,” he said.
