Legislation to Confront Opioid Crisis: Garden Hoses Against a Wildfire

***Press Release***

Legislation to Confront Opioid Crisis:

Garden Hoses Against a Wildfire

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Tax Policy, spoke on the floor of the House about the very modest opioid bills the House is considering this week. He detailed the ways in which these measures fall far short of confronting the dire opioid crisis and holding Big Pharma accountable. You can watch his speech here or read the remarks below.

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U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett

House Floor Speech, June 13, 2018

America does have a fire when it comes to opioid crises. What we're getting this week and next, instead of experienced professional firefighters with a plan to put out that wildfire, we're being offered a collection of garden hoses. It won't get the job done.

If words, if speeches, if the President's tweets could resolve this problem, we could be here today celebrating a victory. But instead we have a piecemeal program around the edges of the crises. And you only have to look at the President's tweets and his near meaningless declaration of the health care emergency at how he's handling the problem to know how serious these Republicans are about it.

I think the President views this as just another one in a series of political reality television shows that he is producing daily. Because instead of turning to a physician, a firefighter, a scientist, a drug policy expert, he's turned over the leadership of his entire opioid crisis effort to a political consultant and double-talk expert, Kellyanne Conway. We haven't seen much other than talk over there.

And with these 30 bills that are being considered today, making modest changes around the edges of the problem, we're not going to advance very far. Of course there is a reason for this in this Congress. We can only consider legislation that a majority of the Republican Caucus says we can consider. And they applied a test to get these 30 bills to exclude other ones. The test was twofold: If it costs much of anything, the bill couldn't be considered here. Second, if Big Pharma opposed it, certainly it couldn't be considered here.

So like Trump, the Republican Congress offers more words, a few bills that may help a few people, but does not address the central issue in the crisis. What we need is substantial additional resources for treatment. Instead of going in that direction, the Republicans turned about-face and they are trying to drag us backward so we'll have even fewer treatment options than we do today.

The President's latest assault on all Americans who have a pre-existing condition to deny them access to health care, his assault to cut billions out of Medicaid will deny the very places that so many people now can turn to for opioid treatment. So they won't add resources, they won't permit us to add resources, and they want to take away the resources that exist today.

Of course much of the treatment that is out there is necessary because of the wrongs committed by pharmaceutical manufacturers in promoting these opioids in the first place. And here again the test is not approved for bringing legislation on the floor because Big Pharma opposes it. I believe we should be following the lead of 41 State Attorneys Generals across America who are saying, let's look at what Pharma did to cause this problem. Why make the taxpayer pay for everything when Big Pharma played such a role? We ought to have accountability for those that helped to create the opioid crisis. And yet the federal government, though, again Trump talked about it, but he didn't do anything.

After talking about it, the Justice Department and Trump Administration has done nothing. In one single year, Medicaid paid out $9.3 billion associated with this opioid crisis. Billions and billions of dollars and yet when I tried in the Ways and Means Committee to get involved in terms of getting back the money Medicare has paid out, other billions of dollars, it was rejected on a party-line vote. And at the very time that we're being told our police and first responders across America and indeed individual citizens should be carrying Naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of overdoses and prevent a death. We have seen an incredible spike from Big Pharma in the cost of that. I see headlines, "How does a $575 lifesaving drug jump to $4,500?" Because these pharmaceutical manufacturers think they can hijack America and particularly our law enforcement sources.

We need more than a photo-op type of version of these measures. If every one of the bills being considered, all 30 of them, are approved, few of those who really need treatment are going to get it as a result of this. And none of those responsible for this crisis will be held accountable. This crisis is a true hurricane. It's being treated like a dust devil. So approve these modest proposals that do no harm, but then let's move forward with a Congress that really wants to solve the problem.

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