Two bills supported by Kentucky Second District Representative Brett Guthrie are under consideration by the United States Senate.
Guthrie recently spoke with Quicksie and The Wolf about bills on his legislative agenda, one of which is the Support for Patients and Communities Reauthorization Act, which recently advanced out of committee in the Senate.
The bill reauthorizes the Support Act, which was signed into law in October 2018, and focuses on funding for community-based treatment recovery programs. Guthrie said he considers it his signature legislation.
“What our bill does is give support to local communities to make that decision,” Guthrie said. “That’s why I was having my meetings in local communities. If we just have huge grant programs that are prescriptive from the federal government, a one-size-fits-all Washington approach, that doesn’t help communities. It may help some communities, and some communities it doesn’t, so we leave a lot of discretion particularly at the Frankfort level but coming down to local communities to help people.”
Guthrie said he thinks it is important to help people who want to be helped.
“Now there’s some people that are just criminals, and we can’t just dismiss that, and I think we’ve allowed that to happen and we’re trying to tighten that up through our Judiciary Committee, but what we want to do is make sure people are free of their addiction or can live with their addiction so that they can be productive citizens again,” Guthrie said.
The Senate will also be considering the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act, which passed the House with bipartisan support. Guthrie said at a time where people are struggling with health care costs people need to know what they are paying for.
“It focuses on exposing those anomalies, and not necessarily anomalies but planned pricing schemes so that people just continue to raise the cost of everyone,” Guthrie said. “We want everybody to have health care, and we want everybody to have the benefits they were promised. We have to have a system that’s sustainable and affordable and doesn’t bankrupt our grandchildren.”
Guthrie is the chair of the Health Subcommittee on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
