Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I intend to withdraw the amendment, but I want to take a moment to highlight an issue of critical importance to my home State of Pennsylvania where communities across the Commonwealth have been suffering from the scourge of the opioid crisis. First, I want to thank the committee for tackling the IMD exclusion problem. We must ensure access to treatment to get people suffering with addiction on the road to recovery. Going forward, we must ensure that States have the flexibility that they need to provide access to treatment and not unintentionally create obstacles or bureaucratic barriers to care. This is exactly what I had in mind when I introduced my Road to Recovery Act last year. I worked with various stakeholders across the Nation and in Pennsylvania, including Pennsylvania State Representative Gene DiGirolamo and Deb Beck, the head of the Drug and Alcohol Service Providers Organization of Pennsylvania. I determined that States deliberately tailoring criteria to meet their unique situation, whether it be specific local realities or socioeconomic factors, need flexibility and should not be bound solely to the proprietary criteria of one organization--which, in fact, endorsed my Road to Recovery Act that included this same State flexibility criteria provision.…”