crucial information with family members about an overdose so that their loved ones can help them get into treatment. we need treatment. we re making medically assisted treatment for available and affordable and we continue to increase competition and drive down drug prices. and we re driving them down and we ll have a major news conference probably at the white house in about a month. because all of you people and i m talking about prescription drugs, not necessarily the drugs that we re talking about here, but we pay as a country so much more for drugs because of the drug lobbies and other reasons. and the complexity of distribution which is basically another term for saying, how do we get more money. and if you medicare our drug prices to other countries in the world, in some cases it is many, many times higher for the exact
certain drug, we re going to make it possible for that patient to get that drug. and maybe it is going to work. it is hope. it s incredible. they ve been talking about this for years and years and years. we re going to get it approved. so important. i m also calling on congress to change the restrictive 1970s era law that prevents medicaid from paying for care at certain treatment facilities with more than 16 beds. it s such an important factor. in the meantime, my administration is granting waivers to states so they could help people who need treatment now, governor. we re also going to help inmalts leaving prison get treatment so
or his one main solution, let s not mention this will kill low level drug dealers or execute low level drug dealers if you are going to kill that sounds like a new war on drugs. it doesn t sound like a solution for getting people into treatment or getting people help and stopping people from dying for the worst drug crisis in american history. and there is an economic component. some is overprescribing and we ll talk about that, but some is that this is pervasive in areas where we ve seen seen low unemployment. and since people have voted for trump, alienation and they don t feel like they have a job and hopeless are the reason that people turn to drugs like heroin and fentanyl and before that prescription pain medication. and there seems to be a profound disconnect between the way the president thinks about this and the reality on the ground. thank you for your continued reporting. this is a crisis and we need to stay on top of us. joining me now, gary mend ll you
of shatter proof an organization dedicated to reducing the devastation of addiction through prevention and treatment and recovery. he found the the nonprofit after he lost his son brian to addiction in 2011. and gary, it is always great to have you here because you suffered tragedy but you did as you told me a few moments ago, when you lose a child to something like this, you try and figure out the causes and you try and figure out the ways in which another family doesn t have to lose someone like you did. absolutely. and what is so different about the tragedy that i suffered and so many others suffer versus other diseases or other causes of death, this one is preventible and treatable. we know enough today to cut this by two-thirds as far as the new people becoming addicted. and in a matter of a month or two. and a lot of people become addicted through the use of pain killer drugs that are prescribed in a regimen in america where we ve moved toward more
determination and resolve that you are bringing to the opioid crisis. and that is where we re focused on prevention and getting that one-third fewer legal opioid prescriptions to our people. the the second the stopping of the illicit flow of opioids into our country and the thid sh the third is compassional treatment to help people recover and stay away from relapse. so thank you mr. president for your leadership. thank you. you ll be seeing drug prices fall substantially in the not too distant future. and it is beautiful. and i want to thank scott gottlieb. scott is working on different things. but one of them is called right to try. do you what right to try is? these are the people that are terminally ill and there are very, very good looking