Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chair, in closing and in urging opposition to this bill from my colleagues, the reason the IMD exclusion was put in place in the beginning was because of the fear that people who had overdosed, who had opiate problems, would be put into institutions, if you will, and then throw away the key. In other words, they put them in there, maybe they get detoxed, and then they come out. But without any treatment or any followup, community-based treatment, they would just go back to the same thing again; they would overdose again and end up back in the facility. So the fear was that we would have these large facilities where they go in and, without any kind of continuum of care, the cycle just keeps repeating itself. I just want my colleagues to be mindful of that. What happened was, during the Obama administration, States had asked for waivers from the IMD exclusion, and the Obama administration decided they would do that if they provided a continuum of care and community-based services so that the problem that led to the IMD exclusion would not repeat itself. I guess my fear is, today, that this seems like such a simple solution: Okay. We will get rid of the 16-bed exclusion because we need people to go into these institutions.…”