Position: Support
Background: The special interim committee on opioids produced this bill.
Summary: This bill suggests several regulations of the insurance industry in hopes of stemming the opioid crisis.
- Disallows insurance carriers from requiring certain opioid-based treatments when an effective non-opioid treatment happens to cost more than an opioid;
- Directs Colorado’s Department of Health Care Policy and Financing and the Department of Human Services to begin the process of making rules about the non-pharmaceutical components of some opioid treatment plans;
- Makes it illegal for insurance companies to setting higher prices of many varieties for covered non-drug treatments (like physical therapy and acupuncture) for those companies’ patients with chronic pain;
- Allows pharmacists who have special agreements with doctors to give injections of medication for addiction, and specifies the payments for that service;
- Requires insurance carriers to cover a five day supply of buprenorphine (a non-opioid pain reliever) without previous approval, in hopes of preventing opioid addiction;
- Prohibits insurers from trying to punish a health care provider based on survey responses about the provider’s pain management practices;
- Expands existing regulations to include rules on certain addiction treatments.