I won’t weigh in on the upcoming election, for fear of being barraged with insulting tweets by one candidate or ‘offed’ by the other. But the current opioid dependence crisis provides a great chance to learn whether you stand on the side of ‘limited government’ or the alternative.
The TREAT Act takes 5 minutes to read, that would have increased the cap on buprenorphine patients. President Obama undermined the TREAT Act by announcing his own plans to raise the cap soon after the TREAT Act was presented in the Senate. After 7 years without mentioning heroin or opioid addiction, it’s hard to believe Obama’s actions were a coincidence. Only a master politician can ignore 200,000 deaths, and then claim to solve the problem single-handedly despite a do-nothing Congress!
As I wrote earlier, few doctors will make use of Obama’s lousy offer. Today Congress approved a bipartisan bill that will reportedly signed ‘begrudgingly’ by President Obama– who complained that the Bill ‘doesn’t go far enough.’ I wonder how many pages HIS Bill would be.
I invite readers to check out the language of the TREAT Act in regard to the buprenorphine cap– and then read the language of the ‘Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016‘. And then, please, tell me how many patients doctors will be able to treat with buprenorphine. The new law will provide treatment authority for nurse practitioners and physician assistants– I think. How? When? How many? I see a number of details that are left to the HHS Secretary– a post that changes a couple times during a 4-year Presidential term.
How do we set up practices based on rules that change every couple years?!
I’m no political scientist, so I’m just reading the Bill and trying to figure it out– and I encourage you to do the same. Myself, I prefer the language of the TREAT Act, but hopefully the attorneys will get this new thing figured out and let us know how many people we get to help with buprenorphine.
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