Establishing Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force

Floor Speech

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in support of H.R. 4641, a bill to create an interagency task force on pain management. This legislation passed the committee with unanimous support.

In 2014, pharmacies in the United States dispensed approximately 245 million prescriptions for opioids. This is enough to provide a script to every adult in our entire Nation.

At the same time, we know that over 5 million Americans use prescription pain relievers either recreationally or to satisfy an opioid addiction.

This combination has produced tragic results. 2014 produced the highest number of drug overdose deaths than any previous year on record, with opioids and heroin driving the recent surge.

Unfortunately, our Nation's doctors and healthcare providers have not been provided the tools and education necessary to safely prescribe these medications in the midst of an opioid epidemic.

Recently, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine examined this topic and found that ``many physicians admit that they are not confident about how to prescribe opioids safely, how to detect abuse or emerging addiction, or even how to discuss these issues with their patients.''

As a result, we have created a patchwork of prescribing practices with tremendous variation both geographically as well as even within the same field.

This bill would create an interagency task force on pain management to review, modify, and update best practices on management and development of a strategy to disseminate those best practices to prescribers, pharmacists, and other stakeholders.

Those best practices will increase the tools available to providers who prescribe opioids more safely and be able to detect and intervene earlier in instances of substance use disorders.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation, which is part of the opioid epidemic package that we are moving on the floor today on suspension.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy), who is the Democratic sponsor of this bill and has worked a lot on the opioid epidemic problem.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Michelle Lujan Grisham).

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I ask all of my colleagues to support this bill. As I said, this interagency task force is an important part of this larger opioid package that we produced in the Committee on Energy and Commerce on a bipartisan basis. I know the rest of those bills are going to come up on suspension--or most of them--this afternoon. I can't emphasize enough the importance of this package, as well as this bill, as being part of it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I want to urge all my colleagues on this side of the aisle to support the bill as well.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, but I support the amendment.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I rise as the designee of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moulton) to offer amendment No. 5.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, this amendment by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moulton) would basically add representatives of veterans service organizations to the Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force that we have discussed and that we support on a bipartisan basis. I urge support for Mr. Moulton's amendment.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moulton), the sponsor of the amendment.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I urge support for the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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