Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend Mr. Carter, Mr. Loebsack, and Mr. Reed, bipartisan Members working together on legislation to develop the bipartisan bill. This Medicare program provides healthcare coverage to more than 58 million of our citizens. Serving the over-age-65 population, Medicare accounts for a large share of total opioid prescriptions, as you might imagine. While many Medicare beneficiaries with serious and very real pain-related conditions are being properly prescribed opioids, we have to be mindful of the potential dangers of diversion and misuse of these very prescriptions. There is no silver bullet in stopping the opioid crisis in this country, but this legislation before us now will study one potential tool for slowing misuse and diversion of opioids prescribed to the chronic care population. Abuse-deterrent formulations have proven to the Food and Drug Administration that they are harder to abuse because of certain properties they contain. While no abuse-deterrent formulation is 100 percent resistant to abuse, I think we need to know what policies may be in place that would limit patient access to these drugs for when they are the right option. I believe this bill is important to inform future discussions on these technologies, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' and pass H.R. 5582. I know Mr. Carter, again, our resident pharmacist, has been very active in this effort.…”