Last Wednesday the House passed with a vote of 392 to 26, a medical innovation bill known as the 21st Century Cures Act, aimed at curing diseases, with the measure securing bipartisan support after months of negotiations.
The bill’s goals are to speed up the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of new drugs while also investing new money in medical research.
The package also includes a range of other healthcare priorities, including $1 billion over two years to fight the epidemic of opioid addiction and $1.8 billion for Vice President Biden’s cancer “moonshot.”
The cures legislation also includes a mental health portion that seeks to reorganize and improve accountability for government mental health programs.
The Senate is due to take up the cures bill sometime before leaving town next month. In the Senate the bill will probably face a bumpier path. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have blasted it as a giveaway to pharmaceutical companies.
Still, enough Democrats are expected to support the measure to get it approved.
“This bill, which expedites the approval of drugs and devices, includes literally billions of dollars in additional spending for health research so that we can find the cures and the answers to what patients are demanding today,” said House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the measure’s main sponsor.
The White House gave the measure a boost on Tuesday night by announcing that it “strongly” supports passage, pointing in particular to the opioid funding and the funding for the cancer moonshot.
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