Washington journal continues. Is atcongressman paulsen our desk. And nevertheless taken up the issue of the of euro crisis did dust opioid crisis. The opioid crisis. Opioids affect people from all walks of life. Can you give people a sense of how widespread the epidemic is . Minnesota is not one of those states where its been high in the radar the last couple of years, but theres no doubt that the trend has been increasing. It is not just in the urban core. It is affecting people in Rural Communities and the suburbs. Heroin is easily accessible. The death of prince was a fentanyl overdose. In the county i represent, there have been more deaths in may than all of last year. Resources for long person and education is really critical at this time. For Law Enforcement and education is really critical at this time. Host do you think the republican plan to replace the Affordable Care act does some of the things . Guest theres a 15 billion st of money set aside that can be used for Mental Health, for opioids and 100 million for states to target populations for health care. Minnesota has been known for its Health Care Progress in solutions. There are some resources that can be better tuned to that. It all came out of the 21st century cures act. It was very bipartisan. It makes sure we target more resources to Rare Diseases must remind the process at the fda that streamlines the process at the fda. Host medicaid a key funding mechanism for opioid treatment. A lot of concern about the cuts to medicaid that are included in the republican efforts. We are not sure what the final bill will like. Tribune noted the state of minnesota would lose money for medicaid under the senate plan. How do you replace that . Guest those resources should absolutely go towards helping people with disabilities and poorer populations, elderly populations. This expansion of medicaid has gone on this unsustainable track. We have to make sure were statesning it to give flex ability to target resources and part of it is just slowing the growth of medicaid as we talk about a cut, is it a cut or reduction or just a slowing of the growth . Host what about the mandate portion of the aca . Pulling back the mandate that would cover Substance Abuse treatment, making it a mandatory part of plans . Is that something you support . Guest that is something i have to look at. You have the essential Health Benefits and the mandates that require people to buy Health Insurance. Approach, government onesizefitsall is not a good approach. Despite the Affordable Care act helping some people come it actually hurt a lot of people people cant afford it or they are rejecting bind coverage in the first place. Mandating somebody by something is not the answer to buy something is not the answer. The president and congress can do a lot more together on this issue. We have 2 million addicts right now across the country. Dayre losing 44 people a that is a number that is too high. In some states come it has been really prevalent. We can always do better. We need help from the administration and we need help bipartisan lee. The good news is we have had that bipartisan support of the last eight years. Host congressman erik paulsen represents the Third District of minnesota. Also serves in the state legislature for a number of years. Democrats, 2027488000. Republicans, 2027488001. Independents, 2027488002. We start with daniel in maryland. Line democrats. Caller my father died at the age of 35 of drug action. Uppermiddleclass white neighborhood. In the 1980s and 1990s, you had a significant number of people in the inner cities going through the crack epidemic. We treat drug addicts as criminals. We would rather lock them up and get them treated. It is now affecting white people thats the only reason were doing things. Instead of getting people treated, they want to cut. Rograms like medicaid i fail to see how those resources are solving things i dont think people at the end of the day really care. Guest we need to invest more resources. It is about caring. Based on the initiatives we passed last year with the 21st century cures act, we thegnized this is a problem stereotype in the past is it is an innercity problem. This is impacting people in Rural Communities am in the physicians across the state of minnesota have come forward with new solutions. We have held roundtables with Law Enforcement. Montana. F in line for independents. Caller i have a comment about the Opioid Epidemic. You dont really suppose the pharmaceutical companies re a care about whether you are i as long as they cane sell their poison . As long as health care a forprofit enterprise, nothing will ever change. Host what would you like to see, jeff . Caller the profit motive removed from the health care from the Insurance Companies. Health care is nothing more than extortion using fear as a motivator. Guest i do think health has been too much focused on sick care as opposed to focusing on wellness and prevention. It is something we need to talk more about valuebased health care. And then providing reimbursement to our providers based on how well patients are doing. Are they meeting benchmarks and improving their outcomes . If they dont improve, they will not get reimbursed. That will spur more innovation and more competition. Ex in walnut cove, north carolina. It is really a heroin and fentanyl problem. Ive been on opioids for seven years for chronic back pain the doctors are getting scared to they cut down on your medicine so far that use sit around in pain and stuff because they are so scared of the dea or whoevers going to bust them. Outt hes pointed accurately that it is fentanyl, opioids a lot of people have now been using these drugs as an addictive measure and when a physician cuts them off, they pursue fentanyl online. There are a lot of challenges in the space. Host what was that story . Identified that her son had access to purchasing fentanyl online. It came overseas from china. It just shows the challenges of cutting off the supply. It is easily adaptable and probably cheap and acceptable. It led to a tragic death. Host is congress doing something about the supply list . Guest those conversations are just starting now. It involves homeland security, relationship other countries from overseas trade. Relationships with other , overseas trade. Erseas trad host when you are here in room with, you steve scalise. Guest i had a chance to visit him last friday before heading home for the weekend. It was good to have a chance to visit with steve. His beard was i commit his energy is high. He has a long recovery his spirit was high, his energy is high. He will be in rehab pretty soon. That will afford him the opportunity to be back on his feet. He could have a 100 recovery. Hearing his voice and seeing him firsthand i was not there that theday. I was bringing constituents to the white house for a tour that orning host for the baseball shooting. Lawmakers wonder about the necessity unaffordability of security. Guest it is something on all of our minds. Local Law Enforcement generally knows what we are doing. We put great trust in the Capitol Police and to kitty we have here. The capitolc police and security we have here. They were heroic and their actions that morning. It is being talked about this year as about the legislative appropriations. Be talking more about that as that process plays out this week. More of your calls. Mary in phoenix, arizona. Line for democrats. Caller im really bitter about the drug problem. Ive seen a whole lot of corruption in Law Enforcement and county governments. The county governments are running there making crystal meth. This is from 28 years ago. A senator here in arizona and john mccain himself refused to do a damn about anything cannot pardon my link which. About anything, pardon my language. It is a wasteland out there. And nobodys doing anything about it because Everyone Wants some money. One chair told me its ok for him to sell drugs because he is the good guy. He deserves the money. Told me its ok for him to sell drugs because he is the good guy, he deserves the money. Try to doe in fear of anything about it because the officials are against them. Im not sure about the situation you mentioned there, but i can tell you that the Law Enforcement committee we have in minnesota does a very good an outstanding job of staying connected with folks dealing with the Opioid Epidemic and making sure that they are protecting the public. Host ramona. For republicans. Hollywood, florida. Shame if you have chronic illnesses and have a very hard time getting the in medicine we need to have any kind of life i lay in bed and i have no kind of activity. Aredrugs on the street causing the overdoses. Overdoses of drugs that are being prescribed are usually because of another drug that is prescribed. Getve to drive two hours a doctor that will prescribed a pain med to me i dont abuse it. Street. Sell it on the yet, i have a hard time getting it. This is a situation where the doctorpatient relationship is so critical. Amona mentioned having physician prescribed opioids that needs to continue for people who have legitimate pain. The doctor knows what is good for their patient. Host do you think congress can find the happy medium there . The pendulum has swung too far and they dont abuse and they need these sort of drugs. Had you encourage your colleagues to take that into account as well . Guest this is always the challenge of making public policy. It involves a lot of stakeholders. We can make progress and we always have to be working ive talked to physicians who said we always used to get 25 pills to every single patient that came in. After we started reevaluating and looking at our history of what these patients really needed, we only give 10. It allows the patient to come back and ask for more if they truly need it. Host mapleton, illinois. Independent. Caller good morning. Retired one person from company ive been paying special attention to the soap im retired Law Enforcement from california. Ive been paying special attention to the opioid crisis. When i retired, this was treated as a Law Enforcement issue. Im surprised your party isnt tough on crime on this one. Its not even mentioned about incarceration. The position of opioids is a felony and it should be treated as such using your argument, not mine. Point that because it is affecting mainly white people, according to statistics, that it is being treated as something other than incarceration and to be consistent, you should be treating it as such. Is a situation that has evolved and developed over time. A lot of members of congress recognize this is a problem in their own communities. Its happening in suburbs and Rural Communities. Thats why everyone has been going together looking at how we connect and apply solutions to these challenges. Heard the heart wrenching stories and tragedies of folks that have been personally impacted. We also had Law Enforcement at the table to talk about incarceration issues. We talk with Mental Health folks and the physician community. We are all pulling together and working together in bringing Solutions Together sometimes it is resources, sometimes it is targeting efforts on addiction. On theont page story Washington Post recently about repeat users, the cost of repeat users, people who need lifesaving drugs again and again and discussion about how limited of use those resources and whether there should be discussion about what you can do about those repeat users, whether somebody is too far gone to save. Guest we should always use resources to say people. This will be conversations that happen in individual committees. To save people. Host raj in herndon, virginia. Independents. If all the companies thisif im investing in companies, i checked them to grow their revenues by 10 each year. These companies, i expect them to grow their revenues by 10 each year. Because Health Insurance is available cheaply, not many people are going to buy it is a noble concept, but it hasnt worked. If fei company has to produce a present more revenue each year if a company has to produce 8 or 10 more revenue each year how it works. Me guest one of the things we need to do with health care is actually making sure we are providing resources for wellness , prevention and health care. That meansck care having transparency so that consumers, doctors, physicians know what different procedures cost. That has been masked right now with Insurance Companies in particular. Doctors dont know what procedures cost. Aving more transparency as part of that conversation can lead to better results and Better Solutions as well. Host weve been monitoring the president s twitter page. One minute ago, the president we treated tweeted guest i cant have any predictions. Im one who doesnt believe any one party has a monopoly on good ideas in this space. We will see what the senate votes on to proceed with. If they get onto the bill, you will see a lot of amendments. Will see bipartisan votes the house went through this a few months ago. Host would you be in favor of a process that started at the beginning and had democrats and republican sitting down to the table and starting over here . Guest we should always have everyone sitting down at the table. One of the challenges we are seeing in why the law itself has , itsuch disastrous results was done on one party site. We always have to be reaching across the aisle for solutions. Host warrenton, virginia. John. Applicant. Go ahead. Republican. Go ahead. You talk about opioids can i talk about health care . Host go ahead, john. Caller two things. The republicans in the hinterland im in Northern Virginia come outside of the sea Northern Virginia, outside of d. C. We like freemarket. I teach my kids things and we learn about freedom and the free market government Controlling Health care is not the free market. We dont want that. I dont know where repealing the police came from. We want repeal. That is one. When is somebody going to stand up and talk about how absurd it is that the Mainstream Media is trying to take down our president . I hope that cspan is not helping. Theres this one message out there about how terrible trump is. Trump is not terrible. He is very good. We needed to break up this crazy monopoly that is going on in the federal government between the congress and the president. Answer this second question. Government think controlled health care is not the direction to go. Its one of the reasons why we have ended up with an Affordable Care act that has helped some people but heard a lot of people as well. Ive talked to Cancer Patients who lost access to physicians or people who have an insurance card but dont get any coverage. S a part of this specifically he wants repeal, not replace. Guest we should just repeal the you have ae sure stabilized Insurance Market that allows people to have coverage. That is very important. On the cspan thank you for having me on today. You take calls from democrats and republicans an independent and dependents and independents. How would you define Mainstream Media . Guest we have seen people go into the corners on all sides. They watch cable tv and politics and media. And social media. Host line for democrats. As you can. Thats michigan. Line for democrats. Michigan. Caller i live in a town of 7000. I actually know of 10 people that have died from opioid overdose. Constitution starts with we the people. Take the middleman out of health care and eliminate insurance, the profit motive . Leave it to the people, which is the government. I think the opioid thing would go down. Thats all ive got. Guest im not sure what the connection might be with the profit motive with Insurance Companies on opioids. A town of 7000 when you know tend to let pass away, and clearly shows and demonstrates when you know 10 people who passed away, it clearly shows it is a parttes of our health care discussions right now. You iant to ask know youve done a lot of work in combating human trafficking. Several bills introduced on that come including efforts to enhance protection i want to get your reaction to that tragedy in texas where 10 people are dead and more still in critical condition. Guest and ill tragedy just happened in texas. N awful tragedy just happened in texas. Its literally been happening in best in minnesota, weve made great progress at the state level. Providing safe harbor for 1214yearold girls treating them as victims and getting them services in getting them back on their feet again. House. Ed 16 bills in the many of them will become law, targeting the demand side and providing assistance to victims. Making sure they get back on their feet and get housing and get jobs. Host congressman erik paulsen of minnesota, republican. Thank you so much. Guest thank you for having me. Host up next, we will be joined by democratic congressman John Garamendi of california. Later on, we will take a look at lawmakers salaries and benefits. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Sunday night on afterwords, rosa delauro talks about her efforts to protect social programs in her book the least among us. ReachedSocial Security its lowest point, we had Ronald Reagan and tip oneill who came acted and the congress acted to make Social Security solvent into the future. With all of this wringing of hands about Social Security and being insolvent