Nurturing and Supporting Healthy Babies Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. BILIRAKIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4978, the Nurturing and Supporting Healthy Babies Act. This bill will help our most vulnerable Americans.
H.R. 4978 will require the GAO to study and report on the prevalence of neonatal abstinence syndrome to help determine the size and scope of this prescription drug problem and its impact on newborns.
Neonatal abstinence syndrome refers to a group of conditions that occur when a child is born addicted to narcotics and is going through withdrawal. This, unfortunately, affects my district in Florida and all over the country.
I visited babies in the hospital. In 2013, during a drug summit in Pasco County, health officials discussed the growing problem of babies born addicted to prescription drugs. Pinellas County, my home county, at that time ranked first in the State for babies born addicted. We must do all we can to help those struggling infants and their families.
This bill also includes two provisions I have worked on to reform Medicaid payments for abuse deterrent formulations and fight fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. Currently, Medicaid does not sufficiently cover abuse deterrent formulations for generic drugs. During a hearing, I spoke to Secretary Burwell about this problem, and she expressed to me the need for a legislative fix to this payment issue. This bill provides a solution and helps prevent drug abuse within Medicaid.
This bill also includes a provision to protect the predictive analytic algorithm which identifies and prevents the payment of improper claims in Medicare. These tools, designed to prevent fraud, need to be protected from being disclosed to bad actors.
Back in 2013, I introduced legislation to protect these predictive analytic algorithms from the Freedom of Information Act disclosure, and H.R. 4978 includes this important legislation.
This legislation will help protect our newborns and all those facing prescription drug abuse and addiction.
Mr. Speaker, again, I thank Representative Jenkins and the Energy and Commerce Committee, and I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 4978.
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