Bill expanding access to hyperbaric oxygen therapy for Missouri veterans heads to governor

Missouri lawmakers passed a bill Monday evening to establish a fund to pay for hyperbaric oxygen therapy for veterans with a traumatic brain injury and facing post-traumatic stress disorder to help prevent suicide and opioid addiction.

With a unanimous 33-0 vote, Missouri senators sent the bill to the governor for his approval. 

“It was remarkable to hear the testimonials,” said state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Republican from Harrisonville, during the Monday Senate debate. “And we just want to set this up to where veterans don’t have to go broke to receive a treatment that virtually has zero side effects and only true benefit.”

The House passed the bill, which was sponsored by state Rep. Chris Brown, a Republican from Kansas City, in April with a 156 to 1 vote. Brattin sponsored a companion bill in the Senate.

“The bottom line is, there are too many veterans that are taking their lives,”  Brown said during the House debate in April. “They don’t see a way out. They can’t deal with it. And I think the oxygen therapy certainly will help and maybe even is the answer.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, the goal of hyperbaric oxygen therapy is to get more oxygen to tissues damaged by disease, injury or other factors. Patients enter a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber, where the air pressure is increased up to three times higher than normal air pressure. The lungs can gather much more oxygen than would be possible breathing pure oxygen at normal air pressure.

The bill directs the Missouri Veterans Commission to compile an annual report with data about the treatment of hyperbaric oxygen therapy and its effectiveness.

Missouri House seeks to improve access to hyperbaric oxygen therapy for veterans

On Monday, Brattin said he and other senators were moved to hear how the treatment offers veterans an alternative to a “giant bag full of prescription drugs that they have to remain on.” 

“That’s what we’ve seen with these veteran treatments,” Brattin said. “It’s just basically prescribing a whole bunch of these drugs that have massive side effects and get that veteran potentially addicted or hooked on to these to remain a functioning member of society.”

Dale Lutzen, a retired senior master sergeant from the U.S. Air Force and a legislative advocate for the non-profit TreatNOW, was among those who testified about the treatment during a committee hearing in January. Lutzen said that veterans with traumatic brain injuries or PTSD are typically given prescription drugs that treat symptoms but don’t cure the brain injury.

“As an alternative to drugs, hyperbaric oxygen therapy stimulates brain wound healing and it can reverse soft tissue and neurocognitive damage,” Lutzen said. “This treatment allows patients to experience recovery of cognitive and neurological functioning without surgery or drugs.”

Despite numerous studies that prove its efficacy, he said the treatment is not on Medicare’s approved list and is therefore not covered. 

“At its most basic level, (the legislation) gives veterans, who have been diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury or PTSD, the right to receive the treatment as prescribed by a doctor,” he said.

Lutzen has been pushing for the last four years to get the fund established, he said. Last year, the bill passed in the House but stalled in the Senate.

According to the bill’s fiscal analysis, the cost of reimbursing hyperbaric facilities for the necessary treatments could exceed $5 million annually. The funds will come from “any appropriations, gifts, bequests, or public or private donations,” the bill states.

State Sen. Stephen Webber, a Democrat from Columbia, attempted to offer an amendment directing the state to conduct a study on using psilocybin — also known as “magic mushrooms” — to treat depression, substance use or as part end-of-life care among veterans. 

The provision comes from a bill Webber sponsored and one that’s been filed for the last three years. In 2023, the House voted overwhelmingly in support of the idea but it never made its way to the Senate for a full vote. This year, Webber’s bill passed out of the Senate Families, Seniors and Health Committee.

However, it was quickly blocked by Republican state Sen. Mike Moon of Ash Grove who said he would rather the bill “go through without any potentially risky amendments that would compromise the effort.”

Seeing the possibility that Moon might “talk on it for a while,” Webber said he’d withdraw his amendment and asked to speak with Moon directly about supporting the psilocybin bill. 

Webber added that like Brattin, he was moved by the testimony he heard about the oxygen treatment. 

“When you find something like that and there’s something that provides relief for some people,” Webber said, “then it would be a shame not to try to expand access to it.”