Medical Experts: Inadequate Federal Approach to Opioid Treatment and the Need to Expand Care

CHAIRMAN CUMMINGS' OPENING STATEMENT

PURPOSE

The hearing will examine:  (1) why so many patients and families in need of treatment are unable to obtain it; (2) whether the responses to date from the Executive Branch and Congress have been adequate to address this generational crisis; and (3) H.R. 2569, the Comprehensive Addiction Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, which is intended to increase access to evidence-based treatment and wraparound services critical to supporting sustained recovery.

BACKGROUND

For the entire first two years of the Trump Administration, the President failed to issue a National Drug Control Strategy, even though it is required by law.  Finally, this past January, the Administration released its first Strategy, but it failed to meet even the most basic requirements of the law.
 

A study based on the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that “of the 19.9 million adults needing substance use treatment, 10.8 percent received specialty treatment.”
 

Last month, Chairman Cummings and Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced the Comprehensive Addiction Resources Emergency (CARE) Act—modeled directly on the bipartisan Ryan White Act, which Congress passed in 1990 to help state and local governments combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic—to provide the resources and the comprehensive framework to finally begin treating the opioid crisis like the critical public health emergency it is.
 

The CARE Act has been endorsed by more than 200 organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), the American Psychological Association (APA), and National Nurses United.
 

This will be the third Committee hearing examining solutions to our country’s opioid epidemic.  The first hearing was held on March 7, 2019, and the second hearing was held on May 9, 2019.