Senate Democrats are lining up to oppose a $6.8 billion medical research package, making quick passage in the Senate next week highly unlikely.
The lawmakers are criticizing the 21st Century Cures Act, which would be funded partly by taking money from prevention and public health funds created by Obamacare. Senators also complained that the $6.8 billion is too little to devote to medical research and that an earlier version called for about $9 billion.
“This bill is a pale imitation of the original bill. It overpromises and underdelivers,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on the Senate floor Wednesday.
Other senators took aim at provisions in the bill to loosen regulations for drugmakers on how they can market off-label uses for their products.
Currently a doctor can use a drug for a purpose that wasn’t approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but drugmakers cannot advertise those unapproved uses. The bill would allow pharmaceutical companies to promote the uses to insurers.
“This is just what Big Pharma wants: freedom. Freedom to mislead consumers about what drugs actually have been proven to do,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.
Merkley also complained that the bill takes about $3.5 billion from a fund created by Obamacare devoted to public health programs.
He said taking from that fund is a gift to tobacco companies that “hate prevention programs because they make their money off addicts.”
Merkley and Durbin are the latest senators to oppose the Cures package, which aims to speed up approval of new drugs and devices in exchange for boosting funding for medical research.
The House will vote Wednesday to add mental health reforms to the Cures package, and then will send it to the Senate.
Merkley and Durbin join Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in their opposition to the Cures bill.
Warren took aim again at the bill on the Senate floor Wednesday.
“This bill isn’t about doing what the American people want,” she said. “This bill is about doing what drug companies and donors want.”
