Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is objecting to medical research legislation that would weaken a law intended to expose payments from pharmaceutical companies to doctors.
The Senate version of the 21st Century Cures Act was announced Saturday and proposes $6.8 billion in new funding for the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. The package, which would boost medical research and speed up approval of new drugs and devices, has bipartisan support.
However, Grassley, of Iowa, is objecting to plans to quickly take up the bill if the Senate keeps a provision weakening the Sunshine Act, which Grassley co-authored.
The bill would remove a reporting requirement under the Sunshine Act, which forces healthcare manufacturers such as drug and device-makers to report payments to physicians and teaching hospitals.
The 21st Century Cures Act would exempt doctors from reporting speaker fees from companies for educational events and payments intended for medical education.
Grassley took umbrage to the provision.
“Watering down Sunshine provisions is counterproductive and goes against the trend in healthcare to have more transparency, not less,” he said in a statement. “A lot of earlier payments to doctors were under the umbrella of Continuing Medical Education.”
Grassley said the provision in Cures would create a loophole that would let “drug and medical device companies mask their payments to doctors under a payment category that’s too broad and could gut the spirit and the letter of the Sunshine Act.”
Grassley noted that in 2015, manufacturers reported $7.52 billion in payments and ownership and investment interests to physicians and teaching hospitals.
The House is voting Wednesday to include mental health provisions in its version of the cures package, which it already passed.
Grassley said he would object to the Senate bringing up the full package under unanimous consent, a procedural move that is used to cut debate time and is employed for noncontroversial legislation.
