It’s January! Seems like this month comes around more quickly than ever. A year ago, we all suspected Congress would be in gridlock and it looks like we were mostly right. The modest surprise came in the late innings when Congress passed an omnibus spending bill covering the 2023 fiscal year, which runs through September. This massive $1.65 trillion, four-thousand-page bill was passed just before Republicans took over the House of Representatives with as slim a partisan advantage as the Democrats maintained over the last two years.

While the conservative Republican block in the House bitterly chastised their Senate colleagues for not waiting to fund the government until they became the majority, the deed is done. What’s in this magnum opus? There was not much that directly affected LTC pharmacies, but here are a few items in the funding package of note:

     • Removes DEA Restrictions for Prescribing Buprenorphine: This drug has been known to be effective in the treatment of several

       conditions, including opioid addiction. Prescribers needed special permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)

       to legally prescribe it. The law now removes that authority from the DEA. Read More >>