[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 7]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 9778]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 TRUMPCARE WILL ABANDON AMERICANS SUFFERING FROM ADDICTION AND OVERDOSE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. TERRI A. SEWELL

                               of alabama

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 22, 2017

  Ms. SEWELL of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, our country is in the midst of a 
drug overdose epidemic that's devastating families and communities 
nationwide. Each day, 144 people die from drug overdose. Opioids kill 
more people than car accidents, and heroin kills more than all gun-
related homicides.
  Recently, President Trump stated the opioid crisis ``is a crippling 
problem throughout the United States'' and vowed to ``expand treatment 
for those who have become so badly addicted.'' After promising the 
American people that he would take action to alleviate this suffering, 
he endorsed a GOP health reform bill that would decimate mental health 
and substance abuse treatment for those most in need.
  Now, we all know about TrumpCare. We know the House version of the 
bill would cut more than $800 billion to Medicaid, cause 23 million 
Americans to lose their health insurance, and disproportionately hurt 
the same low- and middle-class voters in rural areas who helped elect 
him in order to give a massive tax cut to the wealthiest Americans. And 
the Senate version, released today, is expected to have largely similar 
effects.
  Today, I want to focus on one particularly harsh way TrumpCare harms 
Americans and their families: It severely reduces access to critical 
mental health and substance abuse services for victims of this public 
health crisis, especially the 62 million Americans living in rural 
areas.
  Folks living in rural areas, including many of my constituents in 
Alabama, are older and sicker than the average American and have higher 
rates of premature death, which is largely driven by drug overdoses. 
More than one third of Alabamians live in rural areas and report poor 
mental health. What's worse, for every 11,000 of my constituents living 
in Wilcox County, there is only one mental health provider. Wilcox 
County is only one example of the mental health provider shortage in 
rural America.
  While the ACA didn't solve all of these problems, it made real 
progress towards increasing access to affordable and high-quality 
mental health and substance abuse services. It ensured that all 
individual and employer health plans covered therapist appointments, 
hospital visits, and medications. It banned lifetime and annual limits 
on the amount that health insurance companies would pay for critical 
mental health and substance abuse services. It capped out-of-pocket 
costs for these services, and finally, it ensured that no one would be 
discriminated against because they had pre-existing mental health or 
substance abuse conditions. Together, these reforms gave Americans 
suffering from this drug epidemic hope for lasting recovery.
  TrumpCare, rather than building on the successes of the ACA and 
strengthening treatment for the 22 million Americans suffering from 
mental health and substance abuse disorders, wipe out access to life-
saving health services for the families that need it most. The House 
version of the bill would allow states to eliminate requirements that 
health plans cover mental health and substance abuse services, and it 
would allow insurance companies to inflate prices for Americans who 
suffer from pre-existing conditions in certain states. As a result, the 
independent Congressional Budget Office has projected that individuals 
with a mental health or substance abuse history could be charged 
``thousands'' more under TrumpCare than under the ACA. In addition to 
affecting the 175,000 Alabamians who purchased health insurance on the 
ACA marketplace, these cost hikes could extend to 1.6 million 
Alabamians with employer-sponsored health insurance.
  Republican ``solutions'' to these problems are drastically 
underfunded, partly in an effort to reduce the total cost of TrumpCare 
in order to fund tax breaks for the wealthiest executives and heirs in 
our country. As a demonstration of my Republican colleagues' 
priorities, they vetoed an introduced TrumpCare amendment that would 
mandate coverage for mental health and substance abuse services.
  To put it simply, more people will die from drug overdose if 
TrumpCare is passed. Instead of helping the rural voters who helped 
President Trump get into office, he betrayed them by supporting 
legislation that wipes out life-saving mental health and substance 
abuse treatments in order to cut taxes for Americans like him. 
TrumpCare will lead to more families torn apart by addiction, more out-
of-home placements for children whose parents are suffering from this 
epidemic, and a larger burden on child welfare and foster care systems 
already at capacity.
  We have made real progress in combatting the opioid crisis in recent 
years, but our fight is not over. Regardless of partisan affiliation, 
we must ensure affordable and comprehensive mental health and substance 
abuse services for all Americans. Those who do not will have to answer 
to the grief-stricken families whose loved ones fall victim to this 
drug overdose epidemic.

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