The House passed a bill Friday to bolster medical discoveries and speed drugs from the lab to patients, easily overcoming ripples of opposition from both parties.
Dubbed 21st Century Cures, the bill gives $8.75 billion to the National Institutes for Health and $550 million to the Food and Drug Administration over the next five years.
It also reduces the amount of time and trial patients needed to determine if a drug is safe, a provision that had some wondering if it went too far, harming patients by exposing them to products that haven’t been fully vetted.
Yet the bill breezed to passage, 344-77, after the chamber defeated amendments to alter the bill’s funding scheme and to eliminate pro-life language.
“Today, we took a big leap on the path to cures, but we still have much work left to do. The 344 votes today should be a springboard for action. On to the Senate,” said Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, Michigan Republican, Rep. Diana DeGette, Colorado Democrat, and other sponsors of the bill.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican, is working on parallel efforts in the upper chamber and hopes to have a bill before the end of the year, an aide said Friday.
Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, had thrown his support behind the House bill, which passed in committee, 51-0, and is projected to reduce deficits by $500 million over the 10-year budget window.
Yet some conservatives complained that new NIH funding would be mandatory, so they could not revisit it each year during spending process. They repeatedly evoked the financial havoc plaguing Greece, saying the U.S. wasn’t far behind.
“There is no discipline up here in this city,” said Rep. Dave Brat, Virginia Republican whose amendment to make the spending discretionary was defeated, 141-281.
Mr. Brat shocked the political scene by defeating then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his Republican primary last year.
On Thursday, Mr. Cantor offered his support for 21st Century Cures, saying “there will be no cure for terminal childhood diseases, cancer, or Alzheimer’s without a national commitment to basic science and research.”
Conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation and Club for Growth had urged lawmakers to vote “no” on the bill, citing the new spending and a decision to sell off $7 billion in oil from of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and make only slight tweaks to Medicaid reimbursements to pay for its reforms.
Some Democrats, meanwhile, cried foul over so-called Hyde language that prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions, noting it was added after the sweeping committee vote.
“I will not support any bill that adds such language,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Illinois Democrat, said.
Republicans said the language is frequently attached to bills — it was put into Obamacare to win support from pro-life Democrats — and shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
An amendment to eliminate the abortion language was defeated, 176-245.
The White House, while largely supportive of the bill, has complained it boosted funding for NIH and FDA without addressing mandatory cuts known as the sequester.
It also warned the bill could “undermine regulatory standards by allowing unproven uses of therapies to be marketed to health care payers as though such uses had been proven safe and effective.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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