Description:
On May 9 and May 17, 2018, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce ordered 59 bills to be reported related to the nation’s response to the opioid epidemic. Because of the large number of related bills ordered reported by the Committee, CBO is publishing a single comprehensive document that includes estimates for each piece of legislation.
H.R. 5797, the IMD CARE Act, would expand Medicaid coverage for people with opioid use disorder who are in institutions for mental disease (IMDs) for up to 30 days per year. Under a current-law policy known as the IMD exclusion, the federal government generally does not make matching payments to state Medicaid programs for most services provided by IMDs to adults between the ages of 21 and 64. Recent administrative changes have made federal financing for IMDs available in limited circumstances, but the statutory prohibition remains in place. CBO analyzed several data sets, primarily those collected by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, to estimate current federal spending under Medicaid for IMD services and to estimate spending under H.R. 5797. Using that analysis, CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 5797 would increase direct spending by $991 million over the 2019-2028 period.
