Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, this week, we have seen a number of well- intentioned bills come to the floor with good ideas on how we can address the Nation's opioid epidemic that is sweeping our entire country.
I was proud to lead one of those efforts with my good friend Representative Bucshon with a bill that endeavors to lift the cap on the number of patients a provider may treat with buprenorphine to 250, while expanding prescribing privileges to nurse practitioners and physician assistants.
This is a good bill, and it would make a real, immediate difference for individuals facing months-long waiting lists for effective treatment, like the gentleman that I met last week when touring an addiction clinic in my district. He had struggled with addiction for decades and, after making the decision to try to get clean, was faced with a closed door and a 7-month waiting list due to outdated Federal rules that our bill would have fixed.
Unfortunately, when this bill came to the floor, we were told the cap language had to be temporarily replaced with placeholder sense-of- Congress language until we go to conference because our bill was going to cost too much.
Now, when we talk about the cost of this bill, what we are really talking about is the fact that more people will have access to effective treatment and more lives--more lives--will be saved. It is an unfortunate truth that, in the distorted budgetary terms of Washington, dead people cost less than the living.
So we can talk all we want and we can pass all the bills we want, but unless we put our money where our mouth is, we will simply be peddling false hope. We will be condemning more of our brothers and sisters to the death spiral of addiction when we could have done something to help.
A sense of Congress won't end months-long waiting lists for effective treatment. A sense of Congress won't get lifesaving overdose reversal drugs out to our first responders. If this Congress has any sense, as we move into conference committee, we will support this epidemic with the robust resources this country deserves for a real and meaningful response.
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