A key Senate panel is working to push a major package of bills to advance medical research for new cures.
The only snag is how to pay for it.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Tuesday unanimously advanced seven bills to the full Senate that focus on electronic medical records, medical devices and other measures. Committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said the panel is now working on how to pay for more funding for medical research.
The bills are part of a package of about 50 the committee is considering that is the Senate’s answer to the House’s 21st Century Cures Act, a package the House passed last year.
But a key question since the House’s passage has been whether the Senate would keep the $9.3 billion in mandatory funding that mostly would go to the National Institutes of Health, a popular provision in the package.
Alexander said that mandatory funding might not be the way to go for the entire package.
“Several members of our committee have talked to me about mandatory funding for some of the work that we need to do,” Alexander said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “I don’t want to get the cart before the horse.”
In addition to “things we normally fund,” Alexander said he is open to paying for five initiatives through mandatory funding, which are:
- NIH’s precision medicine initiative
- The Obama administration’s cancer “moonshot” program that prioritizes new cancer treatments
- The BRAIN initiative, which focuses on the human brain
- Big BioThink Awards
- Young Investigator Corps, which reward younger investigators who are doing medical research.
“We may be able to pay for these initiatives in our normal appropriations process, but I am willing to consider using mandatory funds for these initiatives,” he said during the Senate HELP markup hearing Tuesday. “Because of our budget deficit, I believe we need to find that funding by reducing existing mandatory funding.”
Alexander didn’t say what programs needed to be reduced to instead fund the five programs.
“We should be about setting priorities in the Senate and I can’t think of a better priority than biomedical research,” he said on the Senate floor.
President Obama’s budget released Tuesday included an additional $1 billion in NIH funding for the cancer “moonshot.”
