Medicaid Reentry Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Medicaid Reentry Act, and I urge all Members to support its swift passage in the House.

This bill is about saving lives, pure and simple. 64,000 Americans died of a drug overdose in 2016, more than were lost at the peak of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Based on data from the States, we can estimate that as many as 10,000 of those deaths annually are individuals who have had some interaction with the criminal justice system in the previous year. This is a national emergency that demands immediate action.

Individuals who are returning to society after a stay in a corrections facility are particularly vulnerable to overdose deaths. Research has found that formerly incarcerated individuals reentering society are 129 times more likely to die of an overdose during their first 2 weeks back into the community than the general population.

The risk of overdose is elevated during this period due to reduced physiological tolerance for opioids among the incarcerated population, a lack of effective addiction treatment options while incarcerated, and perhaps poor care transitions back into their given community.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, roughly 60 percent of our incarcerated population has a substance use disorder, yet only around one-quarter of those are receiving any type of treatment.

Even for those receiving treatment, out of the roughly 5,000 jails and prisons in our country, fewer than 40 provide medication-assisted addiction treatment using methadone or buprenorphine, which, along with naltrexone, is considered the gold standard in treating opioid use disorder.

Those that do offer full-scale MAT services are seeing results. I have seen firsthand the success of a MAT program called SHARP at the Albany County Correctional Facility in upstate New York where individuals shared anecdotes with me about how access to treatment has transformed their lives for the better.

We have seen even more compelling data from the State of Rhode Island, where a comprehensive addiction treatment program offering access to all FDA-approved forms of medication-assisted treatment in State corrections facilities was able to lower deaths in the first year post-release by a staggering 61 percent.

My legislation would open the door to more of these success stories and is designed to increase State flexibility in the Medicaid program to address the vulnerable population during the 30 days prior to an individual's release.

As amended, the Medicaid Reentry Act would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to release guidance to State Medicaid Directors on demonstration opportunities that would allow States to waive the current Medicaid inmate payment restriction during this prerelease period so that individuals could better access mental health and addiction care and have an improved care transition back into the community.

By passing this bill, we can allow States to expand innovative approaches to reentry that are already underway in places such as New York, Ohio, New Mexico, and Rhode Island.

I thank Energy and Commerce Chair Greg Walden and Ranking Member Pallone and their staffs for the constructive collaboration on this bill. I also thank my Republican colleague Representative Mike Turner for his efforts to help shine a light on this vulnerable population.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, while I would have liked to have gone even further with this effort, I believe that this smart-on-crime legislation will plant the seeds for meaningful change and will help to give individuals reentering society a fighting chance to live a healthier, drug-free life.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

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