Brown Joins Addiction Treatment Professionals, Patients As His Bill to Boost Treatment Is Set To Be Signed Into Law

CLEVELAND, OH – U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) today joined addiction treatment professionals and patients at the St. Vincent Charity Medical Center in Cleveland to discuss the passage of his bill to help more Ohioans access treatment for substance use disorders. Senator Brown worked with Ohio Senator Rob Portman to secure a provision in Congress’ latest opioid package that will make more treatment beds available to Ohioans struggling with addiction and substance use disorders. The bill was passed by both the House and Senate and is expected be signed into law by President Trump soon.

“There isn’t a community in Ohio that hasn’t been touched by the addiction crisis,” said Brown. “We are doing all we can to fight it, but we have to make it just as easy for Ohioans to seek treatment as it is to get opioids. Lifting this outdated cap on the number of people facilities can treat will allow more Ohioans to access the potentially life-saving help they need.”

Brown’s bill with Senator Portman would lift the Institutions for Mental Disease (IMD) exclusion in order to expand Americans’ access to treatment for opioid addiction. The IMD exclusion is a decades-old policy that prohibits states from using federal Medicaid dollars to pay for treatment at residential mental health or substance abuse facilities with more than 16 beds. This policy limits access to treatment, hampers behavioral health parity, and prevents many Americans from getting the help they need.

The Senators’ bipartisan bill would lift this outdated cap for five years, covering all substance-use disorders, so more Americans can access treatment services at these inpatient facilities. The full text of the legislation is here.

More specifically, the provision will:

• Expand access to inpatient care for individuals with a diagnosis of substance use disorder, regardless of the size of the facility;
• Require participating facilities to have plans for transitioning individuals to outpatient treatment, or other forms of care, after their inpatient stays.
• As a condition for expanding access to care, require that state Medicaid programs cover six of the nine American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) continuum levels of care, including all outpatient levels of care, in order to ensure coverage continuity after leaving inpatient care; and
• Establish a maintenance of effort for states to maintain their current level of funding as a condition for receiving new IMD funding, in order to target federal dollars towards new services and care.

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