Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Dr. Burgess, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, for his fine leadership on this issue, along with our colleagues, Mr. Mullin and my friend from Oregon and colleague, Mr. Blumenauer, who put a lot of work into this. I commend my colleague from Oregon for his strong statement in support of this legislation. Combating the opioid epidemic has been a top priority of all of us in this Congress and especially on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which I chair. We have committed the last year and a half to examining the ways we can respond to save lives, to help people in our communities, and to end this deadly, deadly epidemic. During that time, I have heard a lot of stories, both at the hearings here in the Nation's Capital and back home in Oregon, where I have held multiple roundtables and meetings in the communities about what we need to do to help the outcome of patients; our neighbors, our friends, in some cases family members, who are dealing with these addictions. An extraordinary array of people, including patients, parents of those suffering with addiction, the Oregon Hospital Association, Oregon Governor Kate Brown, physicians, and substance use disorder treatment providers, have all told me and our committee that existing Federal confidentiality regulations and statute known as 42 CFR part 2, or simply part 2, are working against--working against--patients and making it harder to effectively treat addiction.…”