Dozens of bills to combat the opioid crisis will receive votes on the House floor during the next couple of weeks, Republican leaders have announced.
“It will take us two weeks to finish this process, but at the end of the day, we’ll continue to make America safer and more secure and more prosperous,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said when announcing the schedule.
McCarthy did not release a final list of bills that will be taken up for a vote, but at least 57 were passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Lawmakers have been working on the bills for months in the face of mounting deaths from opioids, which include illegal drugs such as heroin and prescription painkillers. Latest-available data, from 2016, show that more than 42,000 people died of such overdoses.
Given the multifaceted reality of the crisis, lawmakers have been considering a variety of approaches, and have said repeatedly that they expect to turn back to the issue even if legislation is agreed upon by both chambers and signed by President Trump.
One of the provisions would repeal a law that does not allow hospitals to have more than 16 substance abuse and mental health beds in order to be reimbursed by Medicaid. The rule, which was created in 1965, intended to promote the expansion of smaller community-based centers. The centers didn’t materialize, and patients instead are placed on long waiting lists.
Other bills that may be considered would expand treatment for people who entered prisons with addictions to opioids, give the Food and Drug Administration more authority to intercept illegal drugs that are trafficked through the mail, and allow the agency to bring more nonaddictive treatments for pain to market.
A Senate opioid bill was passed out of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, but a floor vote has not yet been announced.
[Also read: Kratom advocates fight FDA crackdown]
