Responsible Education Achieves Care and Healthy Outcomes for Users' Treatment Act of 2018

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5796, the REACH OUT Act.

This bill creates grants for technical assistance education for outlier prescribers of opioids. The recipients of these grants, Mr. Speaker, will educate outlier prescribers on best practices for prescribing opioids and provide instruction on how to reduce the number of opioids prescribed in the future.

Coupled with legislation we will also consider today that would require notification of outlier prescribers of opioids, this bill will further provide outlier prescribers with the tools to return to the appropriate prescribing range for their specialty to help reduce overprescribing.

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that we have just been informed that there will be a last-minute change to two of the suspension prints under consideration today in order to accommodate a request from the Appropriations Committee.

The minority only received notice of these changes within the last hour. While they appear to be changes that are technical in nature to address the jurisdictional issues, we want to highlight our concerns with the last-minute changes being made to legislative text that are being considered on the floor with such short notice. It is not the best way to legislate, especially on bipartisan bills on such an important topic.

My colleagues and I have expressed some concern about this process, and this latest issue reinforces those concerns. We urge the Speaker to commit to continuing to work with us on a bipartisan basis to avoid some of these changes in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I support this bill. I hope the House will support it as well, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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