U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) is urging U.S. Senate passage of the U.S. House-approved SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act, which includes a provision he sponsored to fight infectious diseases resulting from drug abuse.
H.R. 6 would make several changes to state Medicaid programs to address opioid and substance use disorders, according to the congressional record summary. The bill passed the House, 396-14, on June 22 and was sent to the Senate on June 25. H.R. 6 includes language from more than 70 other pieces of legislation, including the Eliminating Opioid Related Infectious Diseases Act of 2018, H.R.5353, which Rep. Lance introduced on March 20.
“If we are serious about ridding our communities of this drug epidemic we have to fight the problem on all fronts,” the congressman said on Aug. 16 during a roundtable discussion he hosted with the Addiction Policy Forum at his Flemington, N.J., district office.
“We passed H.R. 6 out of the House, and we need the Senate to pass the legislation and send it to the President’s desk as soon as possible,” Rep. Lance said, noting that the proposed bill includes new tools and funding to fight the opioid crisis “and hold pill pushers accountable for their bad actions.”
The bipartisan H.R. 6, introduced on June 13 by U.S. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), chairman of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, has 16 cosponsors, including U.S. Reps. Bill Shuster (R-PA), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Michael Burgess (R-TX), Tom MacArthur (R-NJ), Steve Stivers (R-OH), and Frank Pallone (D-NJ).
H.R. 6 includes the bipartisan H.R. 5353 that Rep. Lance wrote with U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-MA) signing on as the main original cosponsor. H.R. 5353 would amend the Public Health Service Act to require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to expand its grant program for combating hepatitis C infections to include other infections associated with injection drug use, according to the congressional record summary.
Rep. Lance, who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and sits on the Combat Heroin Taskforce, said he was pleased to be working with the Addiction Policy Forum to get H.R. 6 signed into law.
Jessica Hulsey Nickel, founder of the Addiction Policy Forum, called H.R. 6 “historic legislation” that takes a vital step toward providing more resources and improved policies to bolster the nation’s opioid prevention and addiction treatment efforts.
“As a national nonprofit organization, Addiction Policy Forum understands the importance of having comprehensive, evidence-based resources to address addiction, and we are thankful that key policymakers, such as Congressman Lance, for listening to the voices of patients and families and treating addiction like the disease that it is,” Nickel said.