Today, Mobilize Recovery joined eleven organizations in signing a joint statement calling on members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reject two bills that would roll back hard-won access to lifesaving addiction treatment. We signed because our community — people in recovery, their families, and the frontline workers who show up for them every day — has too much at stake to stay silent.

Why This Moment Matters

The United States is at a turning point. In 2024, overdose deaths fell by nearly 27 percent — the largest single-year decline in decades. That didn't happen by accident. It happened because of sustained investment in prevention, treatment, and recovery infrastructure. It happened because of deliberate efforts to make care more accessible and more responsive to the real lives of people seeking help.

That progress is now at risk.

What the Bills Would Do

Two pieces of legislation are advancing through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and both would move us backward.

H.R. 5629 would reverse key provisions of an HHS rule on medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) — specifically policies that allow patients to take methadone doses home and to initiate treatment via telehealth. These weren't radical experiments. They were common-sense flexibilities, initiated during the first Trump Administration, that helped people stay engaged in treatment while managing work, childcare, and transportation challenges. For people in rural and frontier communities with no clinic nearby, telehealth isn't a convenience — it's the only door open to them. Closing it doesn't restore a neutral baseline. It restores a failed one.

H.R. 5630 would impose new data collection and diversion-reporting requirements on states through the Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Services Block Grant. Accountability matters — we believe that. But these requirements fall outside the core purpose of the block grant and risk pulling limited resources away from the treatment and recovery services that are already producing results.

What the Research Says About Treatment Access

For anyone unfamiliar with medications for opioid use disorder, here's what the evidence shows:

• Methadone and buprenorphine are the gold standard of care for opioid use disorder. These aren't workarounds or substitutes — they are the most effective treatments we have.
• They reduce overdose death risk by 50 percent or more.
• They generate enormous long-term cost savings — between $25,000 and $105,000 per person over a lifetime.
• Despite all of this, only about 17 percent of the 4.8 million Americans living with opioid use disorder currently receive medication treatment.

We are not overmedicalizing a social problem. We are dramatically undertreating a health crisis.

The telehealth and take-home dose flexibilities weren't accompanied by increases in methadone-involved deaths. The research is clear. Rolling them back is not a question of caution — it's a question of ideology winning over evidence.

Mobilize Recovery's Role

Mobilize Recovery exists to build political power in the recovery community and ensure that people with lived experience have a seat at the table where decisions are made. This joint statement is a direct expression of that mission.

We are proud to stand alongside A New PATH, Community Education Group, Dream.org, Drug Policy Alliance, Faces & Voices of Recovery, the Global Health Advocacy Incubator/Overdose Prevention Initiative, IC&RC, the Legal Action Center, the National Behavioral Health Association of Providers, Partnership to End Addiction, and Truth Pharm.

Together, we are urging Congress to oppose H.R. 5629 and H.R. 5630 and to instead advance policies that expand access to treatment, support patient stability, and build accountability in ways that strengthen — not undermine — progress.

Read the full joint statement: www.advocacyincubator.org/news/2026-03-25-joint-statement-on-protecting-access-to-evidence-based-treatment-and-strengthening-accountability

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