Pingree, Golden vote for bill removing barriers to medication-assisted recovery

Maine Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden voted in favor of a bill that passed the U.S. House on Wednesday that would eliminate bureaucratic hurdles that prevent millions of people suffering from substance use disorder from accessing life-saving medicine.

The legislation, the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act, would attempt to address outdated federal regulations that hamper healthcare providers from being able to prescribe drugs like buprenorphine that are used to treat opioid-use disorder. Providers must currently obtain special permission, known as an “X waiver,” to prescribe buprenorphine.

The bill was part of a larger package that also eliminated barriers to accessing methadone, another opioid use disorder treatment, and bolstered funding and training for people with mental health and substance use disorders to enter the workforce.

“More than two million people in the United States have an opioid use disorder and half of all Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder in their lifetime. That’s why it’s so egregious that the federal government has underfunded mental health and substance use disorder treatment for so long,” said Pingree in a press statement.

“This bill includes an unprecedented expansion of access to medication-assisted treatment programs, which we know are among the most effective ways to help people on the road to recovery,” Pingree added.

This federal requirement has left many rural counties across the country without access to buprenorphine, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Of the 1,100 counties with great need, 56% had inadequate capacity to treat patients with buprenorphine in an office setting due to a lack of providers with the required waiver.

Only 11% of people with opioid use disorder received medication-assisted treatment in 2020, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Advocates said that the legislation is greatly needed as more than 2.5 million people in the U.S. are estimated to suffer from opioid use disorder. Nationwide, there were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths during a 12-month period ending in April 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That was a 28.5% increase from the year before.

The federal action comes as advocates in Maine have been pushing state lawmakers to respond to what they describe as an overdose crisis here with a record number of people who lost their life in 2021 to overdoses. That number reached 636 deaths last year. Twelve a week, or nearly two people a day. 

More than 425 organizations have called for removing federal restrictions to medication-assisted treatment, including the National Council for Behavioral Health, Mental Health America, the NAACP, the American Medical Association, the National Association of Attorneys General and the National Sheriffs’ Association.

The legislation has bipartisan support in Congress, although it is unclear if it will have enough votes to overcome a possible Republican filibuster in the Senate.  

In 2021, President Joe Biden’s administration began loosening restrictions on buprenorphine by allowing doctors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and other providers of care to no longer need to undergo training before they are allowed to prescribe the drug.

Photo: Maine Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden. | Beacon