Murray: New addiction-treatment law won’t work without funding

U.S. Senator Patty Murray visited Spokane’s opioid treatment program Tuesday to push for $920 million in federal funding to fight heroin and prescription drug abuse.

The visit comes after President Barack Obama signed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA, into law July 22.

The law, which Murray advocated for, provides some immediate steps to help fight opioid abuse, including allowing nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe buprenorphine, a medication used in many opioid addiction treatment programs. New Obama administration rules changed around the time the law passed also raised the cap on the number of patients one provider can treat with the drug from 100 to 275.

But much of the law, including grant programs for states to expand treatment and access to overdose-reversing drugs, is moot without funding. The final version of CARA, which passed in July, didn’t include any appropriations to implement the law.

“It’s an unfunded promise,” Murray said Tuesday. She’s introduced the Expanded Access to Treatment and Recovery Act to provide funding.

Murray toured the clinic Tuesday, where staff spoke about the logistics and impact of their methadone-assisted treatment program. People with opioid addictions come to the clinic every morning for a dose of the drug, which fights withdrawal symptoms without giving them a high.

Several patients spoke briefly with Murray, explaining how they got into the program.

“I overdosed and died,” said Richard Stevenette, who’s been receiving treatment for six years. After saving him, Stevenette said his cardiologist told him, “I didn’t go through all this stuff with you just to watch you kill yourself” and pushed him to enroll in the health district program. He’s been there since.

Funding is already a challenge for the program, which has a waiting list of about 125 people. Most of those are Medicare or Medicaid patients, said Dr. Matt Layton, the medical director of the program.

“They have an entitlement. They’re entitled to care and we don’t have the capacity,” he said. Private insurers are better about funding treatment because they know it will save money in the long-run by avoiding emergency room visits, Layton said. But Medicaid hasn’t caught up yet.

Layton praised Murray for her work in passing CARA and other bills to help people get treatment for substance abuse and mental health.

“She is one of our biggest advocates,” he said of Murray. But he said CARA was unlikely to expand access to treatment programs without funding to accompany it.

Speaking to a group of patients, staff and media at the Spokane Regional Health District, Murray said she was committed to fighting for that funding.

“These are steps in the right direction, but our work on this epidemic is far from over,” she said. “If we all keep doing this together, I believe we’ll get the resources we need.”

This article was updated on Aug. 24 to correct a statement about raises on the suboxone cap for care providers. That raise was because of administrative changes, not CARA.