While Congress typically struggles to pass a significant agenda during election years, lawmakers are now inching forward on major medical research legislation that has the potential to not only land on President Obama’s desk, but win his approval.
The Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this week will hold the first of three hearings on a series of bills that would fund and enable faster and better medical innovation as well as modernize the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
The Senate committee will consider seven bills on Feb. 9, among them a measure to improve electronic health records. Others aim to advance medical research for rare and neurological diseases as well as rehabilitation.
Senate panel consideration will begin just weeks after President Obama, in his final State of the Union address, proposed a cancer “moonshot” that includes $1 billion for medical research.
Senate action follows the House, where six months ago lawmakers passed with overwhelming bipartisan support the 21st Century Cures Act, which is a comprehensive medical innovation measure.
“The House has completed its work on the 21st Century Cures Act,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate HELP Committee. “The president has announced his support for a precision medicine initiative and a cancer ‘moonshot.’ It is urgent that the Senate finish its work and turn into law these ideas that will help virtually every American.”
While the House bill passed with great fanfare and support, the Senate won’t take it up because of partisan disagreements over funding and regulating drug prices.
Instead, they’ve embraced a piecemeal approach that may include measures that mirror much of what is in the House bill, lawmakers said.
If the Senate is able to clear several of its own legislative measures, the two chambers will designate a conference committee to write a compromise bill that would then have to pass both chambers. But timing could make completion by this year difficult.
Both the House and Senate this year will operate on a shortened schedule thanks to the November election, which normally results in an adjournment in September or October.
Lawmakers must also attend the Democratic and Republican national conventions, which have been moved up to July. The earlier convention dates eliminate two weeks from the congressional calendar.
Alexander said he hopes to complete committee work in just three months, with additional hearings scheduled in March and April.
Along the way, he’ll have to bridge differences between Democrats and Republicans on the HELP Committee. Democrats want legislation that would reduce skyrocketing drug prices.
“Families across the country have made clear that paying for prescription drugs is an increasingly unsustainable burden,” said Ranking Member Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. Democrats also want more money for NIH and the Food and Drug Administration, which is included in the House bill, but is not fully supported by GOP senators.
Despite the hurdles, authors of the House bill are optimistic about a 2016 deal that can reach the president.
“The Senate announcement is just the latest positive milestone in the effort to give patients and their loved ones more hope,” said House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Ranking Member Diana DeGette, D-Colo.. “But we have much work left to do to make 21st Century Cures a reality. The vice president is working on a ‘moonshot’ to cure cancer, and we’ve got a rocket ship ready to go.”
