Substance Use-Disorder Prevention That Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 6, the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act. The SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act incorporates legislation that I introduced along with my good friend and colleague, Representative Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, which will provide a meaningful expansion to addiction treatment across our country, especially in rural areas, and for vulnerable populations like pregnant and postpartum women and the 13,000 babies born on average each year with neonatal abstinence syndrome.

Our legislation includes three main policy changes to expand access to treatment. First, it eliminates the current sunset provision that would prohibit nurse practitioners and physician assistants from treating patients with addiction medicine after 2021.

By ending this sunset, we can provide certainty to our healthcare community and encourage more NPs and PAs to become part of the addiction treatment workforce.

Second, this legislation would expand the classes of practitioners eligible to prescribe buprenorphine to other advanced practice nursing professionals to include nurse midwives, clinical nurse specialists, and certified nurse anesthetists.

This provision was included based on feedback that my office has received from medical groups such as the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists who are on the front lines of this crisis who have made the case that adding additional classes of highly skilled nurses can help more people access treatment and find that important road to recovery.

In many rural areas, advanced practice nurses play an outsized role in providing care, and this legislation will help expand addiction treatment capacity in these rural areas where it is most needed.

In addition, these advanced practice nursing professionals are already providing primary care for some of our most vulnerable populations: pregnant and postpartum women. By allowing these skilled providers to provide addiction treatment as well, we can bolster continuity of care for our moms and for our babies.

Finally, our legislation would make a technical change that would allow DATA 2000 waivered providers to treat up to 100 patients in their first year if they possess additional credentialing or are practicing in a qualified practice setting.

Taken together, these three changes will make a meaningful difference in moving toward a system of treatment on demand for individuals struggling with the disease of addiction.

To those who would say we need more data or we need to be cautious about expanding access to treatment, I would respond that more and more people are dying in our streets every day. We don't have time to drag our feet any longer.

Finally, I want to thank Ranking Member Pallone, Chairman Walden, and their staffs for the continued efforts on these provisions through many months of back and forth. In a personal way and a very upfront way, let me thank Representative Pallone, our ranking member, and his outstanding staff for the intellect and the energy they poured into this because it truly made this a better bill, and it is going to save lives.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 6.

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