Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Pallone for yielding. I rise in support of H.R. 5102, the Substance Use Disorder Workforce Loan Repayment Act of 2018. Mr. Speaker, I thank the authors of the bill, my colleagues Katherine Clark and Hal Rogers, for putting this together. It is a very carefully crafted bill to address the problem which it discovered, really, which is there is this serious shortage of substance use disorder professionals across the country. We are experiencing shortages in a lot of areas of the healthcare workforce, that is true, but if we are going to address the opioid crisis that we face, this epidemic across the country, we have to bring particular attention to the workforce shortages with respect to substance use disorder professionals. According to SAMHSA, which is the agency which deals with these issues, in 2012, the turnover rates in the addiction services workforce ranged from 18.5 to over 50 percent. So there is a huge turnover there that has to be addressed. In a recent survey, nearly half of clinical directors in agencies that specialize in substance use disorder treatment acknowledged that they have real difficulty filling these open positions. In my district, I have heard from many of the community health centers--Baltimore Medical System, Health Care for the Homeless, and others--that said they can't hire enough of these folks and they can't keep enough of these folks to address the opioid crisis.…”