With 17 U.S. military veterans committing suicide daily, a number nearly double the civilian rate, U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) recently urged U.S. House Veterans’ Affairs Committee leaders to take up his related bipartisan suicide prevention bill.
Rep. Buchanan’s Veteran Overmedication and Suicide Prevention Act of 2021, H.R. 67, which he sponsored in January with lead original cosponsor U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), would require the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to review the deaths of all veterans it treated who died by suicide or from a drug overdose in the last five years. The new data generated by the bill would be used to improve treatments for veterans suffering from both mental and physical injuries, according to a bill summary provided by Rep. Buchanan’s staff.
“The high rate of suicide and drug overdose deaths among veterans is unacceptable,” the congressman said on Nov. 10. “This legislation is critical to learning if prescription drugs, particularly opioid painkillers, are a contributing factor in veteran suicides. I encourage my colleagues on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee to pass this bill to further address these untimely deaths.”
Reps. Buchanan and Connolly sent a Nov. 9 letter to House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano (D-CA) and Committee Ranking Member Mike Bost (R-IL) requesting that they “take action on our bipartisan bill to study the link between addictive opioids and the alarmingly high rate of suicide among veterans.”
According to a September 2019 VA report, at least 60,000 veterans died by suicide between 2008 and 2017. At the same time, the VA has a history of “freely prescribing” opioid pain medication to veterans, reaching its highest level in 2012 with more than 438,000 long-term opioid patients, according to the letter.
“Unfortunately, despite the VA taking steps to reduce the number of opioid prescriptions it dispenses by 70 percent between 2012 and 2020, veterans are still committing suicide at a startling rate,” wrote Rep. Buchanan and his colleague. “It is clear we must do more to end this crisis and help reduce this needless and preventable loss of life.”