CEO Update 217
NABH Releases 2025 Advocacy Priorities!
NABH is pleased to share its 2025 Advocacy Priorities, which we urge you to read and share with your Government Relations teams and others.
Leading NABH’s 2025 Advocacy Priorities are parity, workforce, behavioral healthcare information technology, America’s ongoing addiction crisis, and the Institutions for Mental Diseases (IMD) exclusion.
“Demand for our services across all age groups nationwide has never been higher, as the country continues to face intense access challenges for both MH and SUD patients,” NABH notes in the resource. “Looking ahead, behavioral healthcare providers are armed with new telehealth tools that were expanded during the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which optimize access to care and the reach of the often limited behavioral healthcare workforce that continued to decrease during the crisis. Securing continued telehealth services is an important NABH goal.”
NABH will promote the 2025 Advocacy Priorities @NABHBehavioral on X and at the National Association for Behavioral Healthcare on LinkedIn. Please follow us on these platforms and help us promote your priorities!
House and Senate Budgets Take Shape as Medicaid Remains Vulnerable
House and Senate Republican leaders this week diverged on a path forward to enact a budget and President Trump’s domestic agenda.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), responsible for uniting all factions within his slim majority, has pushed for a one-budget resolution. Meanwhile Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) wants two separate bills that would allow lawmakers to pass easier aspects of government funding – such as energy and border security – while the second bill would tackle more complicated issues, such as healthcare and taxes. Both chambers of Congress made progress on their respective bills this week.
In party-line vote of 11-10, the Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday evening passed a budget resolution to approve the fiscal framework for a package of energy, border security, and defense policy through the partisan budget reconciliation process. Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) framed the two-track Senate strategy as a backup plan if House Republicans fail to move swiftly on their own one-bill proposal. The Senate is expected to take up the budget resolution in several weeks.
Meanwhile, House Republicans passed their one-bill budget resolution in the House Budget Committee on Thursday. The House GOP budget resolution includes a floor of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, a $4.5 trillion cap on tax cuts, and a $4 trillion extension of the debt limit. House GOP leadership expects to move the resolution to the House floor in late February. The resolution itself is nonbinding; however, it would unlock Republicans’ ability to bypass the Senate filibuster to move a massive domestic policy bill with President Trump’s legislative priorities.
As a result of the House GOP’s budget blueprint – which relies on spending cuts to offset a reconciliation bill – House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) needs to find at least $880 billion in savings, including from the Medicaid program, which currently insures more than 70 million Americans. Per-capita allotments for Medicaid, which would produce the most savings, likely do not have enough support to pass in the House; however, Medicaid work requirements remain a focus for savings and are considered among the most politically feasible choices for Republicans. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated work requirements could save more than $100 billion over a decade.
NABH is communicating with Congress that work requirements must incorporate sufficient exceptions to ensure that individuals whose mental or substance use disorders prevent them from satisfying the requirements remain eligible for Medicaid enrollment and are not terminated from the program. These exceptions should reflect the enormous challenges that people with behavioral health conditions face, many of whom need treatment and cannot access it. Medicaid cuts remain a concern for moderate Republicans who have been working to avert significant cuts to that program.
Republicans in both chambers will eventually need to unite around one budget blueprint to be able to vote on a bill that isn’t subject to the Senate filibuster and can pass with 51 votes.
DEA and HHS Delay Buprenorphine Telehealth Rule Implementation
In line with President Trump’s regulatory freeze, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and HHS are delaying the implementation of a final rule issued last month that would allow providers to prescribe buprenorphine for opioid use disorder via telehealth (including audio-only) for up to six months before conducting an in-person medical evaluation.
The rule was originally scheduled to take effect on Feb.18, 2025 and is now planned for March 21, 2025.
DEA and HHS are also accepting comments on whether the effective date should be further delayed, as well as any other concerns about the rule.
This rule will partially make permanent the COVID-19 pandemic-era flexibilities for prescribing buprenorphine via telehealth without ever having conducted an in-person medical evaluation.
Trump Signs Executive Order to Establish ‘Make America Healthy Again Commission’
President Donald Trump this week signed an executive order establishing a “Make America Healthy Again Commission” chaired by newly confirmed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The commission is responsible for assessing and providing a strategy on a host of health issues, including a directive to “identify and describe childhood chronic disease in America compared to other countries; assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures pose to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of disease, using rigorous and transparent data, including international comparisons; assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs; and more.
ICYMI: NABH’s Safe Connections Campaign Highlights Cyberaggression
NABH recently released and promoted two new resources about cyber-aggression as part of its Safe Connections campaign about healthy minds and social media habits for America’s youth.
Please visit our Youth Services page to access all of the Safe Connections resources and share our social media posts on LinkedIn and X.
NABH thanks Donald Grant, Ph.D., with Newport Healthcare, and the NABH Youth Services Committee for its work on this campaign.
ICYMI: NABH Analysis on How Medicaid Could Disrupt Behavioral Healthcare Access
Recently NABH sent all members an analysis explaining how several proposals could lower federal financial participation (FFP) in Medicaid.
These proposals include changing the current formula for Federal Medical Assistance Percentages, instituting caps to FFP at the state- or enrollee-levels (such as by transitioning Medicaid to a block grant), or limiting the existing safe harbor preventing a portion of state taxes on providers’ net patient revenue from being considered when calculating FFP.
Other recommendations have been made to institute work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries. Click here to read the NABH Analysis from Dan Schwarz, NABH’s director of quality and addiction services.
Join Us in May for the 2025 Annual Meeting!
Please plan to join your peers and the NABH team at the Salamander Washington, DC from May 12-14 for this year’s NABH Annual Meeting: Behavioral Health is Everyone’s Concern: Constant Care, Changing Times.
Our thanks to this year’s Annual Meeting Program Committee, which approved this year’s theme. NABH Board Member Patricia Toole, M.A.S. from Hackensack Meridian Health Carrier Clinic chairs the Program Committee, which also includes NABH members Mary-Catherine Bohan, M.S.W. from Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care and Rhonda Ashley-Dixon, M.A. from Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics.
Annual Meeting registration will open in late February. We look forward to seeing you in Washington!
Fact of the Week
A recent study published in JAMA Network Open found that every $100 invested in an employer-sponsored behavioral health program with fast access to psychotherapy and medication management was associated with a reduction in medical claims costs by $190. These findings suggest that expanding access to behavioral health care may be a financially viable cost-reduction strategy for health care buyers.
For questions or comments about this CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond.