Support for Patients and Communities Reauthorization Act of 2025

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. PETTERSEN. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, I am here to beg for your consideration in support of my amendment to address something that happened with the reconciliation bill that changed the 1115 waiver.

Now, this sounds incredibly wonky. An 1115 waiver to Medicaid is something that we are not going to be able to go home and talk to constituents about what we were able to do for them. Nobody knows what the 1115 waiver is.

However, when you talk about the impacts that this has made, this is especially impactful when it comes to Colorado and what we have been able to do to address the opioid epidemic. In Colorado, we were able to utilize the 1115 waiver by proving that by covering substance use disorder treatment, we could save money over time.

What happened in the reconciliation bill was language that said you actually had to prove that it was cost neutral up front and that you couldn't prove the cost savings over time.

What this language will do, it will take our ability in Colorado away to utilize this waiver that has drawn down hundreds of millions of dollars for substance use disorder treatment. In fact, we were the second in the Nation to implement this waiver, and a total of 37 States now take advantage of this.

Mr. Chair, 83 percent of people who are treated in the rural parts of Colorado and across the Nation are on Medicaid. This will significantly impact red States, blue States, and especially the rural places across the United States.

Like many people, my family has been impacted by the opioid epidemic. When I was just 6 years old, my mom hurt her back. She was overprescribed opioids and became addicted like so many Americans. Through my struggle fighting to save my mom's life, I saw how broken our system was, and that is when I worked as a State legislator to change that.

What I saw in my mom's fight when she was overdosing at a high rate when fentanyl started coming into the supply chain, and she was begging for help with nowhere to go, was that Medicaid did not cover substance use disorder treatment. You actually had to go through this waiver process.

I watched my mom being churned in and out of the ER, being kept alive in the ICU in critical condition. The State of Colorado and the Federal Government spent over a million dollars in one year keeping her alive in the ER while denying her access to the care that she so desperately sought.

I was finally able to go through a very complicated court order process to get her the care that she needed. My mom now is about to celebrate 8 years in recovery. She works at one of the places that saved her life and gives back to the community. She is a taxpayer. She is an example of what is possible when we actually invest in people and give them the care that they need.

After hearing her story, we were able to implement this waiver to really increase our capacity as a State to address the opioid crisis. We know that more people have died from the opioid crisis than all world wars combined, and these are people that we didn't have to lose if we actually had the system to support them.

Mr. Chairman, by rolling back this language, you are decimating the substance use disorder treatment across the United States in 37 States and many right now who are in the process of applying for the waiver and who are looking to Colorado as an example.

This would mean hundreds of millions of dollars of treatment we would be denied. The first year alone, we treated 58,000 people with the care that they needed in Colorado. This is 5 years with implementation. It is the reason why we now have a 35 percent reduction in overdose deaths in Colorado. It is overwhelmingly the reason.

Addressing the Medicaid barrier is so important. Let me explain why. People who struggle with the substance use disorder, this brain disease, it increases the likelihood of a decrease in employment.

Mr. Chairman, 80 to 90 percent of people who are struggling with substance use disorder qualify for Medicaid. When the treatment they need and the healthcare they need is not covered and the healthcare system they are relying on is dismantled, the people in this community who are the most vulnerable are disproportionately impacted.

On a day when we are working to ensure that some of the critical programs at the Federal level are funded in this bill which is an important piece of this, we also have to support the structure and the payment system that supports the people on the ground who are doing this work.

It took us years to bring the study, bring the waiver, and prove that this would be a cost savings over time, and then to implement it.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. PETTERSEN. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source