Dear Association Executives - This week, the House Energy & Commerce and Ways & Means Committees released their budget reconciliation bills. Hearings to consider and approve these bills out of committee are planned for February 11-12. Below is a high-level summary of the provisions most important to mental health and addiction treatment providers.
Note: The House Energy & Commerce Committee proposal allows agencies to use the allocated monies until they are fully expended. In other words, there is no fiscal year deadline by which all newly appropriated monies must be spent.
Please see the attached document for a more robust read out of the proposed spending bills.
House E&C: Mental Health and Addiction Funding
- $1.75 billion for each of the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Community Mental Health Block Grants administered by SAMSHA.
- $80 million for mental and behavioral health training for health care professionals, paraprofessionals, and public safety officers.
- $20 million for a national evidence-based education and awareness campaign targeting health care professionals and first responders.
- $40 million for grants for health care providers to promote mental and behavioral health among their health professional workforce.
- $30 million in grants to support community-based overdose prevention programs, syringe services programs, and other harm reduction services, with respect to harms of drug misuse that are exacerbated by the COVID–19 public health emergency. Nonprofit community-based entities and primary and behavioral health organizations are eligible.
- $50 million in grants to support increased community behavioral health needs worsened by the COVID–19 public health emergency. Nonprofit community-based entities and primary and behavioral health organizations are eligible.
- $100 million to the Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program, which is administered by HRSA, to expand access to behavioral health services through focused training.
House E&C: Medicaid Provisions:
- Provides Medicaid eligibility, for five years, to incarcerated individuals 30 days prior to their release. These provisions are based on the recently reintroduced Medicaid Reentry Act.
- Enhanced FMAP to incentivize state Medicaid programs to cover mobile crisis intervention services for individuals experiencing a mental health or substance use disorder crisis.
- An incentive for states to expand Medicaid by temporarily increasing the state's base FMAP by five percentage points for two years for states that newly expand Medicaid.
- Temporary FMAP increase of 7.35 percentage points for states to make improvements to Medicaid home- and community-based services (HCBS) for one year.
Michael Petruzzelli
Director, Federal Policy and Advocacy
National Council for Behavioral Health
Direct: (202) 774-1660
Email: MichaelP@TheNationalCouncil.org
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Neal Comstock
Director of Membership
National Council
NealC@TheNationalCouncil.org202 748-8793
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