House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday pledged to bring back legislation that lets terminally ill patients try experimental drugs after the House rejected it on Tuesday under an shortened process that required a two-thirds majority vote for passage.
McCarthy, R-Calif., lashed out at Democrats for voting down the legislation, which fell seven votes shy of the two-thirds threshold, and failed 259-140. But Republicans are free to bring up the bill again for a regular, simple-majority vote, and McCarthy said that would happen soon.
“We will continue and we will bring the bill back,” McCarthy said at a leadership press conference on Wednesday.
He questioned the motives of Democrats, a majority of which opposed the bill known as “right to try.”
“I don’t know if it was playing politics but we will not stop,” he said.
Democrats said Tuesday they were worried the bill would deliver false hope to patients and families. The experimental treatments also may do more harm than good because they didn’t have oversight form the Food and Drug Administration, said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., top Democrat on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, in a statement.
“We must protect patients from bad actors or unsafe treatments that would make their lives worse,” he said.
The bill would allow terminally ill patients that have no alternative to get access to drugs that have passed the first of three clinical trials that the FDA requires for drug approval. Proponents of the bill include President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who signed a state bill into law while serving as governor of Indiana.
Indiana was among 39 states since 2014 to approve right to try legislation, but the state laws are moot because they can’t override federal law.
The Senate unanimously passed a version of the legislation last year.
