Delgado-led panel in Saugerties delves into opioid crisis
SAUGERTIES, N.Y. — Addressing the growing opioid crisis will require a “multipronged approach” that includes treatment and destigmatization, holds pharmaceutical companies accountable, and strikes "the right balance” to meets the needs of people suffering from chronic pain, U.S. Rep. Antonio Delgado said Thursday.
Delgado, D-Rhinebeck, led a panel discussion about the opioid crisis at the Glasco Fire Company building that included eight experts and was attended by about 40 people.
The panelists were Bruce Baker a Schoharie County sheriff’s investigator who runs the department’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program; Ashima Butler, vice president and chief operating officer of Ellenville Regional Hospital; David Desandro, former pharmacy director at Cobleskill Regional Hospital; Sgt. Julio Fernandez, of the National Guard's Counterdrug Task Force; Dr. Hugo Hanson, of HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley; Ben Riker, of Friends of Recovery of Delaware and Otsego Counties Inc.; Dr. Dean Scher, chief executive officer of Catholic Charities of Orange, Sullivan and Ulster; and Chatham Police Chief Peter Volkmann.
Delgado stressed the need for a bipartisan approach to the crisis. He touted his co-sponsorship of the Addiction Treatment Act (H.R. 2482), which he said would eliminate a “burdensome process” by which doctors must apply for a waiver to prescribe drugs that treat addiction while they are free to prescribe opioid medications with no need for a waiver of any kind.
He also pointed to his co-sponsorship of the Opioid Workforce Act, which would add an additional 1,000 Medicare-funded graduate medical education positions over the next five years at hospitals with programs focused specifically on addiction treatment. Delgado’s communications director, Margaret A. Mulkerrin, said passage of the act "would result in more resident physicians qualified to identify and treat substance use disorders, which is needed across the country and particularly in rural communities.”
The congressman — whose 11-county district includes all of Ulster, Greene and Columbia and most of Dutchess — called the opioid crisis “a matter of life and death” both locally and nationwide and said it is one he is compelled to address with colleagues on both sides of the political aisle.
“My heart breaks every time I encounter a constituent, a mother, a father ... who has endured a loss,” Delgado said.
He said the experts on Thursday's panel are “on the front lines doing lifesaving work.”
Baker said the LEAD program in Schoharie County “came to us out of necessity.
“[Police] are not trained to deal with addiction, mental illness, homelessness, poverty. There are no tools in our belt for that," he said. "LEAD has given us the tools."
He pointed to his department’s use of “intensive case management,” the distribution of clean needles and “giving people that chance that jail doesn’t.”
Volkman, a recovering alcoholic who said he took his last drink on Sept. 2, 1995, said his and the Chatham department’s focus is “Can I help somebody before they get into the criminal justice system?”
Volkman also called on members of the panel and people in the audience to “sit down with people in need. Go to families who’ve lost somebody and ask, ‘Where was our failure?’”
“The antidote to this crisis is compassion,” he said. “This can be overcome, but the antidote is compassion.
Delgado agreed with Volkman and stressed the need for the coordination of resources, an increased “level of awareness,” and “compassion, love [and] acts of kindness” that lead to destigmatizing drug addiction and the recognition of addiction as a disease.
But the congressman also said people suffering from chronic medical conditions who are in need of pain medications “should not be the ones who feel the fallout of this course correction.”
During a question-and-answer period, Andrea Mitchell of Catskill said she suffers from a “degenerative pain disorder” that is likely to take her life “within 15 years.”
“On the other side of the crisis,” Mitchell said, are patients with legitimate pain who turn to street drugs when they are denied pain medications by physicians hesitant to prescribe opioids, even to those who need them.
Mitchell challenged the panel to look at the needs of chronic pain sufferers when fighting drug addiction.
Mitchell became known to the public during the 2018 congressional election because of an interaction she had with then-U.S. Rep. John Faso, R-Kinderhook. During the encounter, she told the congressman about her medical conditions and how important health insurance was for her. She asked Faso to promise he would not take insurance away from people like her.
Faso promised, and he embraced Mitchell. Less than 100 days later, though, he voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and a video of the congressman's encounter with Mitchell became part of a Delgado campaign ad.
Delgado defeated Faso in November 2018.
Asked what he took away from Thursday’s two-hour discussion, Delgado said addressing the opioid crisis “takes money, but it also takes time.”
He said the government must study ways to address the crisis and ultimately “spend money in the most effective ways possible.”
Thursday's panel discussion was hosted by Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan.