Kuster Urges Action on Opioid Crisis to White House Officials

WASHINGTON, NH - U.S. Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, D-NH, met at the White House with administration officials and other stakeholders to discuss efforts to address the heroin epidemic sweeping across our nation, according to a press statement. 

Kuster, who has led the charge in the House to increase federal funding to communities fighting the epidemic, attended the meeting to provide feedback from her constituents and urge the White House and her Congressional colleagues to fight for increased funding and other initiatives to put an end to the opioid crisis. 

“Across the nation, American citizens are more likely to die of a drug overdose than from a car accident. In New Hampshire, we lose a person a day to this epidemic," she said. "This is a national public health crisis, and we cannot sit idly by and watch our citizens suffer without access to sufficient treatment and recovery services." 

She added that during the meeting, she "emphasized the importance of increasing funding for – and access to – treatment options, law enforcement efforts, and lifelong recovery. We need to take a multi-faceted approach to tackling this crisis, and we must pass, and fully fund, the House bills and the Senate CARA legislation that aim to do just that.”

President Barack Obama has requested $1.1 billion in funding to address the opioid crisis, and Kuster introduced the Opioid Abuse Crisis Act that would provide for $600 million, roughly equal to the amount the president’s proposal provides in the first year. During the meeting, the White House’s Director of National Drug Control Policy heard from participants about the urgent need for funding, and he discussed a state-by-state breakdown of how the President’s funding proposal would be allocated. Participants also discussed efforts to ensure that health insurance companies are providing parity for mental health and substance use disorders, and Kuster urged the President to support her Mooney-Kuster bill – bipartisan legislation she introduced with U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney from West Virginia – that would fix a glitch in the ACA that indirectly incentivizes physicians to overprescribe pain medication. 

Submitted by Rosie Hilmer.