Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Senate Bipartisan Bill To Curb Opioid Crisis Includes 3-Day Prescription Limit, $1B In Additional Funding
A bipartisan group of senators is introducing legislation Tuesday to address the opioid epidemic, framing it as a follow-up bill to the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) signed into law in 2016. Dubbed CARA 2.0, the legislation includes a host of policy changes, such as establishing a three-day initial prescribing limit on opioids for acute pain, beefing up services to promote recovery and aiming to increase the availability of treatment. (Roubein, 2/27)
The CARA 2.0 Act, billed as the sequel to the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of late 2016, would be the most substantive action Congress has taken to address the opioid crisis since President Trump took office. The legislation’s unveiling comes as Republicans in both chambers of Congress are ramping up their legislative efforts to address the opioids crisis. The two-year budget deal Congress passed earlier this year included $6 billion in extra funding to address the crisis in 2018 and 2019, but offered only broad outlines of how the funds would be used. Now, legislators, lobbyists, and policy advocates are hurrying to identify policies that could fit into that funding framework. (Facher, 2/27)
The measure would impose a three-day limit on initial opioid prescriptions for acute pain, in line with what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended. There would be exceptions for chronic pain or pain for other ongoing illnesses. The bill would allow states to waive the number of patients that a physician can treat with buprenorphine, a drug to treat addiction to narcotics, since physicians are currently capped at 100 patients. The bill would require physicians and pharmacists to utilize state prescription drug monitoring programs when they provide or dispense opioids. It would increase the civil and criminal penalties for drugmakers that fail to report suspicious orders for opioids or who don't keep effective controls against opioids being diverted. (McIntire, 2/27)
Top Republicans and Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee are requesting information from critical stakeholders on how to prevent and treat opioid addiction in Medicare, as the panel seeks to craft bipartisan legislation to curb the opioid epidemic. Specifically, they’re asking insurers, benefit managers, providers and prescribers to submit information on how the Medicare program can help stem the opioid epidemic — noting that one in three beneficiaries in Medicare’s prescription drug program received a prescription opioid in 2016. (Roubein, 2/27)
