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Thom’s Focus on
Health Care

Thom has focused on health care reforms to ensure North Carolina families have access to affordable and quality health care. Thom has also worked on real bipartisan solutions to combat substance use and advance medical research and innovation.

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Working to Control Health Care
and Prescription Drug Costs

Thom understands that too many people are forced to choose between health care and daily living expenses – and it shouldn’t be that way. That’s why he’s laser-focused on reducing artificially high prescription drug prices, reducing out-of-pocket costs, and ensuring patients don’t have unnecessary delays in accessing quality care.

In the Senate, Thom has:
  • Spearheaded efforts to increase accountability and transparency within the pharmaceutical supply chain and expose behind-the-scenes practices that drive up drug costs.
  • Working across the aisle to introduce legislation to reduce out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for seniors.
  • Introduced legislation to bolster our medical supply chains so America is not dependent on China for critical health care goods and services.
  • Worked to reduce regulatory and administrative barriers to ensure patients receive the care they need when they need it.
  • Pushed back against efforts to turn over more of North Carolinians’ health care decisions to the federal government.
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Mental Health and Well-Being in America: A view from Capitol Hill

Mental Health Reforms in the 21st Century Act

Thom co-sponsored the Mental Health Reform Act, bipartisan legislation providing vital reforms to mental health funding to increase patient access to effective and evidence-based care. Thom worked with his colleagues to secure mental health language from the bill into the 21st Century Cures Act, which was successfully enacted into law. Mental health provisions included in the 21st Century Cures Act include:

  • Integration between physical and mental health – Widens state eligibility for grants to promote integration between primary and behavioral health care for individuals with mental illness along with co-occurring physical health conditions.
  • Improving access to children’s mental health care – Establishes a grant program focused on intensive early intervention for infants and young children who are at risk of developing mental illness. The bill also ensures children covered by Medicaid have access to the full range of early and periodic screening, diagnostic, and treatment services.
  • Strengthening suicide prevention – Continues the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Program and provides information and training for suicide prevention, surveillance, and intervention strategies. The bill establishes suicide prevention and intervention program grants for adults and also reauthorizes Youth Suicide Early Intervention and Prevention Strategies grants to states and tribal communities.

Supporting North Carolina’s Community Health Centers

Thom supports Community Health Centers (CHC) and the major role they play in providing health care to the underserved and rural communities in North Carolina, including services such as mental health and substance abuse treatment, counseling, and staffing.In 2022, in North Carolina alone, 750,000 patients, received critical services from CHCs.

Thom recognized how the lack of CHCF reauthorization in 2017 jeopardized access to care for the most vulnerable North Carolinians and created difficulties for CHCs to plan moving forward. Thom quickly joined a bipartisan group of 66 colleagues to urge Senate leadership to immediately reauthorize funding for CHCs.

Mental Health Reforms in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act

Thom played a key role in writing and passing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, landmark legislation that seeks to reduce violence and improve mental health care outcomes.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act makes a number of critical improvements to our mental health care system, including:

  • $8.6 billion investment to expand Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) that provide 365/24/7 mental health care services in communities across the country. CCBHCs have a proven record of success, including 63% fewer ER visits for behavioral health, 60% less time spent in correctional facilities, and 41% decrease in homelessness.
  • $2 billion investment in programs to expand mental health and supportive services in schools, including early identification and intervention programs and school-based mental health and wrap-around services.
  • $1 billion investment in programs that have been proven effective, including:
    • $250 million in block grants for states to support community mental health services targeting adults with serious mental illnesses and children with serious emotional disturbances.
    • $240 million for Project AWARE, grants for programs that increase awareness of mental health issues among youth and provide training for adults.
    • $150 million to implement the 9-8-8 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
    • $120 million for mental health awareness training for first responders.
    • $80 million for grants to promote pediatric health care through telehealth.
    • $60 million for primary care training for professionals who treat children and youth, including substance use disorders.
    • $50 million to increase access to behavioral health services through telehealth under Medicaid and CHIP.
    • $40 million for the National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative to support the development of behavioral health services for children exposed to traumatic events.
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Combatting the Nation’s Opioid Addiction Crisis

Thom has worked across the aisle on solutions to counter North Carolina’s growing substance use epidemic. In the last two decades, more than 28,000 North Carolinians lost their lives to drug overdoses.

Thom was a staunch advocate for the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, a landmark bipartisan law that brings together the experiences and recommendations of drug addiction experts, law enforcement, health care providers, first responders, and the patient community most affected by the opioid epidemic. The law also addresses the strain the addiction crisis places on our criminal justice system by providing more resources to identify and treat incarcerated Americans, helping put them on the path to recovery, which in turn could lower the nation’s recidivism and crime rates.

Thom also advocated for the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act, another piece of landmark bipartisan legislation to combat the national opioid crisis, which was signed into law by then-President Trump. The bipartisan law aims to stop illegal drug smuggling at the border, makes it easier for more medical professionals to treat people in recovery to prevent relapse and overdoses, and provides support for comprehensive opioid recovery centers.

Drug addiction doesn’t discriminate based on one’s gender, race, or socio-economic status. There are CEOs of companies, straight-A students, and PTA parents who have suffered from opioid addiction. It’s having crippling consequences in our inner cities and suburbs, while also wreaking havoc in the tight-knit communities of our rural areas.

Senator Thom Tillis

The Charlotte Observer

Our nation needs smart, commonsense approaches such as the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. However, we must be honest in recognizing that success will be neither quick nor easy. Addiction is a vicious and devastating cycle of abuse and despair. It affects us all. The fight against addiction is one we must wage together, and one we cannot afford to lose.

Senator Thom Tillis

The Charlotte Observer
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Finding a Cure for Cancer and Other Diseases

The NIH is the largest public funder of biomedical and behavioral research in the world, and Thom has led a majority of the Senate in urging sustained and robust investment in biomedical research funding.

Thom was a strong advocate for the 21st Century Cures Act, bipartisan legislation that became law.The 21st Century Cures Act increases funding for Alzheimer’s and cancer research, strengthens and improves important mental health programs, and gives additional money to fight the opioid crisis across the nation.

Preserving Health Insurance for Children

Senator Tillis is a strong supporter of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (also known as CHIP), a vital program that provides health care coverage to children whose families cannot afford private coverage but cannot qualify for Medicaid.

Thom has repeatedly voted to extend funding for CHIP, ensuring that approximately 200,000 children in North Carolina continue to receive their health insurance through the program.

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Expanding Access to Quality Care

Thom has led efforts to permanently expand coverage of telehealth services, which improves outcomes and makes it easier for patients to connect with their doctors. Adopted as a stopgap measure during COVID, telehealth and virtual care has a proven ability to dramatically increase access to care for those in underserved areas by allowing individuals to receive quality care from the comfort of their own homes.

Advocating for Moms and Babies

Thom introduced the TRIUMPH for New Moms Act (signed into law in the omni), which established the Task Force on Maternal Mental Health within HHS to develop a national strategy for maternal mental health and report on best practices, policies, and programs to prevent, screen for, diagnose, treat, and reduce disparities in maternal mental health conditions.

Thom worked tirelessly to address baby formula shortages, introducing the Access to Baby Formula Act, which ensured baby formula was widely accessible.

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Preventing and Treating Alzheimer’s

As the former caregiver of a loved one with Alzheimer’s Disease, Thom has worked to ensure Congress is doing everything possible to support the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) goal of preventing and effectively treating Alzheimer’s. Thom has worked across the aisle to introduce legislation and support efforts to increase federal funding for research.

Finding a cure to Alzheimer’s disease is a goal that is very near and dear to my heart. Along with my mother and two aunts, I was a caregiver to my grandmother who developed this terrible, debilitating disease. I am all too familiar with the painful reality of “the long goodbye,” the process of seeing your loved one gradually lose their entire life’s memory, and with it, their unique personality and ability to perform even the most basic independent functions.

Senator Thom Tillis

Winston Salem Journal
  • Thom has repeatedly lobbied the Trump administration to increase funding for Alzheimer’s research in the President’s annual budget request.
  • Thom was a strong supporter of the 21st Century Cures Act, which provides $1.8 billion to the NIH for the BRAIN Initiative to improve our understanding of diseases like Alzheimer’s and speed diagnosis and treatment.
  • Thom was a co-sponsor of the Building Our Largest Dementia (BOLD) Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act, bipartisan legislation that created a nationwide public health infrastructure to combat Alzheimer’s disease and preserve brain health. The BOLD Act unanimously passed the Senate and was signed into law.
  • Thom joined Senators Grassley (R-IA) and Schumer (D-NY) to introduce Kevin and Avonte’s Law, bipartisan legislation to help families locate missing loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease, autism, and related conditions. This legislation was signed into law.
  • Thom co-sponsored the Ensuring Useful Research Expenditures is Key for Alzheimer’s (EUREKA) Act, which creates incentives to encourage more public-private collaboration in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, which became law.