Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3331, sponsored by Representative Lynn Jenkins and Representative Doris Matsui, and I commend my colleagues for their work on the bill. One of the reasons why the opioid crisis is so intractable is the lack of access to behavioral health services in all of our communities, and the continued segregation of behavioral health from physical health. For decades, we have neglected our behavioral health infrastructure, and siloed behavioral health from our broader healthcare system. The lack of integration between behavioral and physical health has had serious consequences for patients, including poor to non-existent coordination of care, severe provider shortages, and poor health outcomes. One barrier in addressing true integration has been that behavioral health providers in large part don't have access to electronic health records, and were left out of the push to update electronic health records systems. That is an unfortunate legacy that we are still dealing with today. H.R. 3331 takes an important step in addressing this problem. It is a bipartisan bill that would incentivize behavioral health providers to adopt electronic health record technology, through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation. While this is an important bill, I want to underscore that it is incremental and it is limited.…”