The Senate on Monday will take up a $6.3 billion medical research package that passed the House by a wide margin Wednesday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that the chamber will begin work on the 21st Century Cures Act early next week. The package includes new funding for fighting opioid abuse and for medical research in exchange for speeding up approval of new drugs and devices.
The House passed the package last year, but held another vote to add provisions for mental health reform. The House voted 392-26 on Wednesday to approve the new version.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he expects a “successful vote in the Senate next week, so we can send this to the White House where the president has his pen ready to sign it.”
The White House says it supports the bill and wants the chamber to pass it quickly. The Senate has until Dec. 19 to not only pass Cures but also a funding agreement for the federal government.
Some Democrats are opposing the Cures bill, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who say it’s a handout to the pharmaceutical industry. The senators were upset that some of the provisions in the bill could give drugmakers more freedom to market unapproved uses and get unsafe drugs to the market.
