Sep 23, 2018 3 min read

Republicans and Democrats in Congress don’t agree on much. In fact, pretty much nothing at all. But one issue on which they could find agreement is the fight against the nation’s opioid epidemic.

Earlier this week, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a package of 70 bills with a price tag of $8.4 billion to finance an enhanced battle against opioids. A similar bill already has been OK’d by the House, and President Trump has declared that the epidemic is a national health emergency.

As the Washington Post noted, the Senate bill “is one of the only major pieces of legislation that Congress is expected to pass this year as lawmakers gear up for the midterm elections in November.”

Among the provisions in the bill is one that attempts to crack down on the shipment of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, particularly from China. According to the Post report, addictions to opioids are down, but heroin deaths are increasing because the drug is being laced with the very powerful fentanyl. The Post cited a Centers for Disease Control estimate that of 72,000 overdose-related deaths last year, 30,000 were the result of synthetic opioids.

The Senate bill also aims to create greater access to treatment for people with substance abuse addictions. The Post said that includes grants for recovery centers “where people getting over their addictions can find temporary housing, job training and other assistance during that transition.”

It also calls for student loan repayments to encourage behavioral health specialists to practice in substance-abuse facilities in areas where mental-health professionals are in short supply.

In a conference call with reporters Monday, Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, one of the authors of some of the bill’s provisions, called it an “important step forward.”

Toomey pointed to one measure that would allow Medicare to employ a system to identify people who survive overdoses and share the information with prescription drug plans and doctors in an effort to prevent those people from overdosing again.

“The federal government is the world’s largest purchaser of opioids through the Medicare and Medicaid programs,” Toomey said. “As such, it has a unique responsibility. Medicare and Medicaid have not been doing as much as they could and should.”

Jessica Hulsey Nickel, president of the Addiction Policy Forum, told the Post that she supports the bill.

“I think it’s an important moment of new resources and better policies to address the opioid epidemic,” she said. “It’s a historic bill that treats addiction like the disease it is.”

Others think the bill falls well short.

Sarah Wakeman, medical director of the Mass General Hospital Substance Use Disorders Initiative, told the newspaper that a full-on assault on the opioid epidemic requires the spending of federal funds at the same level as the more than $20 billion spent annually to combat HIV/AIDS.

“We have historically not thought of addiction as a medical issue, and so our health care and public health system are woefully unprepared to respond in a robust way,” she said.

Wakeman is probably correct, but so is Nickel. The Senate and House measures, which are expected to be reconciled and signed by the president, are good first steps in confronting the epidemic. But there’s no doubt that more will need to be done, and it will be expensive.