Biden Administration to Reverse Trump’s HHS Directive Expanding OUD MAT Prescribing Policy
We last alerted you on the Trump administration’s last-minute directive on reducing the “X-waiver” mandate which limits prescribers’ ability to prescribe medications aimed at battling the opioid use disorder (OUD) epidemic. According to the American Medical Association, the OUD epidemic has seen a sharp rise in 2020, especially in overdose-related deaths. Issue brief: Reports of increases in opioid-related overdose during COVID pandemic | AMA (ama-assn.org). In response, the Trump administration hurried through this HHS directive to enable more physician-prescribers to readily treat OUD. This January 14, 2021 move was applauded by prescribers and patient advocate groups who view the “X-waiver” as an unnecessary burden in prescribing medication-assisted therapies (MAT) for OUD patients.
Previously, to obtain an “X-waiver, prescribers were required to undergo an eight-hour training series before being permitted to prescribe drugs such as buprenorphine. Buprenorphine is an opioid medication approved by the FDA to treat OUD. According to the HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA):
[b]uprenorphine is an opioid partial agonist. It produces effects such as euphoria or respiratory depression at low to moderate doses. With buprenorphine, however, these effects are weaker than full opioid agonists such as methadone and heroin. When taken as prescribed, buprenorphine is safe and effective. Buprenorphine has unique pharmacological properties that help:
- Diminish the effects of physical dependency to opioids, such as withdrawal symptoms and cravings;
- Increase safety in cases of overdose, and
- Lower the potential for misuse.
The January 14, 2021 directive eliminated the need for physicians to obtain an “X-waiver” to treat their OUD patients with buprenorphine. To ensure patient safety and greatly lessen the potential for abuse, physicians without an “X-waiver” were limited to treatment of only 30 in-state patients. Non-physician prescribers such as NPs and PAs were still required to obtain the waiver.
In what many frontline operators in the OUD battle see as a disappointing move, the Biden Administration plans to retract this Trump administration HHS directive. While the immediate reason is unclear, anonymous sources in the Biden administration hint that they are concerned with the Trump directive’s authority to effectuate limited the “X-waiver” program by possibly circumventing Congress’ authority and the speed with which it went through HHS.
Biden moving to nix Trump plan on opioid-treatment prescriptions – The Washington Post. This is particularly surprising because Biden’s campaign platform vowed to expand OUD treatment and lift undue restrictions on prescribing medications for substance use disorder. See The Biden Plan to End the Opioid Crisis | Joe Biden for President: Official Campaign Website. The hope is, perhaps, the Biden administration will keep its campaign promises to better combat the OUD epidemic by effectuating their own changes to MAT limitations.
The Biden administration has been issuing 3-5 executive orders (EO) per day, which is potentially circumventing Congress’ authority and the number of his EO’s exceeds the total number of his 4 predecessors’ EO’s all together in a similar time frame. President Biden’s son Hunter – is at best a substance abuser/addict in recovery.
So, Biden has no immediate interest in all those 200+ substance abuser/addicts that die every day of a opiate overdose… to postpone potential treatment of untold number of substance abuse/addict that may have received treatment and not OD’d ? Lives that could have been potentially saved, but for what appears another incident of Biden just putting a STOP to anything that Trump had implemented. Regardless of the costs to others… including unnecessary opiate OD’s that may have been prevented.
Filed under: General Problems
The leftist agenda is to Kill people.. Depopulate. That’s Why.
And The Chinese Supplies the Dope to Addicts to kill off Americans. Biden is in Bed with the Chinese. So Yea, it makes sense. Very Sad Times this country is Seeing. I Don’t know How Anyone could support Biden. Not even for a Second. He’s a puppet and his plan is to Destroy USA. Time to Fight Back.
Naturally, Steve, you are entitled to your opinion. Here’s mine:
1. Taking away the x waiver and simply putting people on Bupe automatically labels them as an addict. I don’t think legitimate pain patients should ever agree to that, even to get a weak pain medicine like Suboxone.
2. Putting people on bupe for maintenance of an addiction will cause epigenes to form. If those people are in reproductive age, (which most are), that will pass that gene on to their following generations, creating the need for that drug (called addiction) in succeeding generations. It takes 4 generations to get rid of epigenes. So we will, if this becomes routine, be creating more addicts at an escalating rate.
This is not the answer. Realizing that no drug causes addiction on its own is the answer, and what the real cause is so it can be addressed. But the method of just passing out pills to cover up the problem is what quack allopathic medicine is all about.