Senator Hassan Discusses Her Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Law at Hearing with Secretary Becerra

WASHINGTON – During a Senate Finance Committee hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Senator Hassan discussed her Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act which recently became law, as well as the importance of adequately providing Title X funding for family planning.

To watch Senator Hassan’s questioning, click here.

During the hearing, Senator Hassan highlighted her bipartisan Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act, which was signed into law last year, that eliminated an outdated requirement that limited the number of medical practitioners who can prescribe life-saving medication-assisted treatment.

When asked about the importance of the law, Secretary Becerra said that “medication-assisted treatment is critical because it’s one of the ways you save a life. If you can get buprenorphine to an individual before they OD, you’ve just saved a life. If you can try to remove the barriers that kept a physician from participating in a program to be able to prescribe a lifesaving drug, you’ve saved a life.”

“And when we were able to really remove the x-waiver cap, we were able to make it more likely that a physician would want to participate in this program and not find themselves subjected to law enforcement oversight, as if they were encouraging drug use,” Secretary Becerra continued. “What we did was we liberated the system to actually treat drug addiction and take away the stigma.”

Senator Hassan emphasized the need for Secretary Becerra and the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that pharmacies are stocking medication-assisted treatment.

Senator Hassan also discussed the need to increase funding for Title X, stating that “Title X is the only federal program dedicated to providing family planning, and it's historically been a program that's been underfunded. But we all know that in light of the Supreme Court's decision last year to restrict women's reproductive freedom, this is a program that's more essential than ever.”

When asked about the importance of this Title X funding, Secretary Becerra called on Congress to give a long-overdue boost in funding to the program, since “it’s not just funding for one type of care, it’s funding for family planning services.”

Senator Hassan has been a leader in standing up for women’s reproductive freedoms and in fighting to increase funding for Title X family planning centers. Senator Hassan also recently led a push urging Danco Laboratories, a manufacturer of mifepristone – which is safely and legally used to manage miscarriages – to submit an application to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to add miscarriage management to the medication’s label. The label currently only includes medication abortion. 

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