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In remarks at a Dec. 13
Brookings Institution event, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra touted the rollout
of the 988 mental health assistance line and the Biden administration’s push
for more mental health funding. In addition to promoting the administration’s
victories, Becerra also reiterated the urgent need to recruit and retain
burnt out practitioners. And he called on Congress to make pandemic-related
emergency telehealth flexibilities permanent.
New funding will put
providers in schools
- Becerra praised
“the resources that Congress gave us that we’re devoting to workforce.
We’re giving a lot to local governments, and sometimes to providers of
mental health.” Those organizations have the option to “use the money to
either reward their workforce that is feeling burnt out and tired, or
they can use the money to provide more pay.”
- “At the same
time, we can tell you [about] the monies that we put into working with
schools, so we can actually have a caregiver, a professional, at school
sites….We’re trying to do more, principally through Medicaid, to see if
we can provide a mental health professional on site, in school, so we
don’t have to worry about young folks not knowing where they can go,” he
said.
- Regarding 988,
Becerra said that “we have a nationwide public health system that relies
on that patchwork of states, territories and tribal governments to do
it. If it’s not done right, within those seams, people fall through the
cracks. That’s why, when 988 launched, the president had given us some
$430 million to do 988 and make that patchwork of call centers seamless.
The year before the president came in, a total of about $22 million had
been invested in 988. It’s a major investment by our national government
to make a nationwide system work seamlessly.”
Secretary calls for
extension of telehealth rules
- “At some point
pretty soon, I probably will declare that we're no longer in a state of
emergency on…COVID, at which point the telehealth flexibilities that
states and providers have to offer…will disappear because the current
law that's right now in remission will spring back in place. And unless
Congress makes changes to those laws, those flexibilities will disappear
the moment I declare there’s no longer a public health emergency in
regard to COVID. So we're hoping Congress will continue to keep those
flexibilities in place,” Becerra said.
- He added that
the administration hopes that it “can expand some of them, because we've
seen how well they worked. And if we don't get those flexibilities, you
will know immediately, because there will be people who immediately lose
access to care.”
- Becerra also
said that the administration will push local governments and providers,
and perhaps Medicaid agencies, to adopt a harm reduction approach to the
opioid epidemic and other substance use disorder challenges.
- “We’ve added
in-between harm reduction” to drug treatment, “because in between you
becoming an addict and getting the treatment, you may do a lot of harm
to yourself that's irreversible.”
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