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

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PETERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I want to take a moment to say a special thank you to Mr. Pallone and his committee staff for their tireless work to address this crisis.

The opioid crisis has ravaged our Nation. It twice has been declared a national public health emergency under Federal law. More than 100 people will die from an overdose just today.

That is why this bipartisan effort to address it is so important. There is certainly work to be done, but I am happy that legislation that I worked on with my colleague, Dr. Bucshon, is included in this bill, and it aims to stop addiction where it frequently begins: after surgery. Millions of Americans are prescribed opioids following routine surgeries because they are cheap and accessible, and nearly 70 percent of those pills go unused.

Our bill reverses the perverse incentive that put so many cheap pills in people's hands in the first place. It allows innovators to receive extra compensation for nonaddictive opioid alternatives if they can show that their alternative therapies have substantial clinical benefit.

In the short term, the policy reduces the incentive to simply use the cheapest postsurgical pain treatment, which is typically an opioid. In the long term, it will spur innovation by providing additional compensation for the future development of nonaddictive alternatives. That means as long as this crisis takes to solve, there will be an incentive to continue to develop nonopioid alternatives.

Of course, access isn't enough. These treatments must also be affordable. We will continue to work with CMS and FDA to ensure that safer and more effective nonopioids are affordable for the people who need them most. We must find better ways to treat this problem where it starts.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source