Senate Finance Committee Passes HHS Omnibus Bill

April 21, 2022

The Senate Finance Committee passed the Senate version of the omnibus Health and Human Services bill on April 19. The health portion of the omnibus bill, SF 4198, was merged with the human services omnibus bill, SF 4410, and passed to the general orders for a future floor vote. 

The bill is much smaller than the House version, both in length and the amount of money it spends. One particular provision the MMA supports is a section of the bill intended to protect patients who need ongoing opioids to treat chronic pain. The bill states that prescribers cannot be disciplined solely for prescribing doses of opioids that exceed an arbitrary threshold for morphine milligram equivalent. This is intended to protect patients from forced tapering of their medications when it is not in their best interest.  

The chief author of the bill, Sen. Greg Clausen (DFL-Apple Valley), spoke against an amendment to remove protections from civil or criminal actions solely for exceeding these thresholds, arguing that stakeholders, including the MMA, have worked on this bill for two years and concern with this language has never surfaced. 

Sen. Melisa López Franzen (DFL-Edina) agreed with Clausen that meddling with the language is potentially dangerous for some patients in Minnesota who rely on access to prescriptions to control chronic pain. She argued that the Finance Committee is not equipped to address this issue.  

Despite DFL objections, the amendment was adopted with supporters arguing that many problems in the opioid crisis derived from physicians overprescribing. Sen. Julie Rosen (R-Fairmont) went on to state that there needs to be accountability in this section of the bill.