By Pat Anson, Editor

A bipartisan bill has been introduced in Congress that would impose a national 3-day limit on opioid prescriptions for acute short-term pain and authorize another $1 billion to subsidize the addiction treatment industry.

The CARA 2.0 Act is a follow-up to the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016. It is sponsored by four Democrats and four Republicans: Senators Rob Portman (R-OH), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA).

“The opioid epidemic truly is a national crisis that is affecting families and communities across the country, and in West Virginia, we’ve become far too familiar with its consequences,” Sen. Capito said in a statement. “While we’ve accomplished a lot in terms of drawing attention to the drug epidemic and providing resources to help address it, it’s painfully clear that we still have a long way to go and need to be doing even more.

Several states have already enacted measures to limit opioid prescriptions for acute pain – usually limiting them to five or seven days’ supply. CARA 2.0 would make a 3-day limit mandatory nationwide for “pain with abrupt onset and caused by injury or other process that is not ongoing.”

The bill would exempt patients with chronic pain and cancer, as well as those in hospice and palliative care. It is not clear how the 3-day limit would apply to patients recovering from surgery or for those whose pain lasts longer than 3 days.

Under the bill the U.S. Attorney General would be authorized not to renew or register the licenses of physicians to prescribe controlled substances if they do not abide by the initial 3-day limit.

It also requires doctors to consult with the prescription drug monitoring database (PDMP) in their state before writing a prescription for a controlled substance to make sure a patient isn’t already getting opioid treatment. Prescribers who repeatedly fall “outside of expected norms or standard practices” would be reported to law enforcement and their state licensing boards.

The latter provision was initially proposed by Sen. Cassidy under the Protection from Overprescribing Act.

"I’m glad the Protection from Overprescribing Act is included in this bill, so law enforcement gets the information they need to identify providers who are overprescribing and fueling this crisis,” said Cassidy, who is a licensed physician.”  “In Louisiana, there is about one opioid prescription for every person. I and other physicians took an oath to first, do no harm. Some doctors are selling these prescriptions for profit. This is doing harm and it must be stopped.”

If passed, the bill raises the penalty for opioid manufacturers who fail to report suspicious orders for opioids from $10,000 to up to $500,000.

States would be allowed waive the limit on the number of patients a physician can treat with buprenorphine (Suboxone), an addiction treatment drug. There is currently a cap of 100 patients per physician.

The bill also seeks to create a national network of addiction treatment facilities, to be funded by $200,000,000 in grants annually from 2019 to 2023. The grants would only be available to large non-profit treatment programs that already have facilities nationwide, such as Phoenix House.