[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14366-14367]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           PASS MENTAL HEALTH REFORM BEFORE THIS SESSION ENDS

  (Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, at noon today, back in my 
district in Pennsylvania, there is a funeral service for Scott 
Bashioum, a brave policeman who died last week. His partner, James 
Saieva, was critically injured. Ultimately, the shooter died of 
suicide.
  Had we had a functional mental health system, lives could have been 
saved. Families could have been spared the mourning.
  The shooter's background is all too familiar: prior criminal 
convictions,

[[Page 14367]]

mental health issues, and not taking medications.
  How many more lives will be lost before we act?
  This broken Federal and State approach to treating mental illness 
will not fix itself. It must be overhauled with the leadership of a new 
office of Assistant Secretary of Mental Health and Substance Use; 
changes to HIPAA laws that currently block families from helping, and 
fixing the crisis shortage of providers and hospitals.
  Waiting will not work. Token or superficial changes won't work. 
Continuing to fund the current mess won't work. If anyone thinks it 
does, then I suggest you get on the phone and explain this to the 
officer's widow and children that everything is just fine.
  Or the Senate can act and pass the changes we passed in H.R. 2646, 
the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, which the House 
passed with near unanimous vote in July. Lives are at stake. Time is 
running short; and for Officer Bashioum's family, time has run out.

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