WASHINGTON -- The Senate passed a sweeping 1,000 page "Cures" bill in the hope of speeding drug development, expanding treatment for opioids and reforming mental health.
Senate Passes 21st Century Cures Act
The Senate passed the 21st Century Cures Act, sweeping legislation that aims to bring treatments more quickly from the lab bench to patients' bedsides, on Wednesday afternoon in a vote of 94-5.
"As a result of a lot of strong bipartisan work, we are sending a bill now to the president's desk that will invest in tackling our hardest to treat diseases, put real dollars behind the fight against the opioid epidemic and make badly needed changes to mental health care in our country," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, just before the vote.
The "Cures" bill authorizes a total of $6.3 billion for funding basic science, streamlining the FDA's review process, and addressing the opioids epidemic.
But not everyone was cheering: Public Citizen called the bill an early Christmas present for the pharmaceutical industry.
Earlier in the week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who voted against the bill, pressed Congress for an amendment to allow Medicare to negotiate with drug companies and to allow drugs to be imported from other countries.
"I have been fighting the greed of the prescription drug industry for decades and as far as I can tell the pharmaceutical industry always wins. They win but the American people lose," he said in a floor speech on Tuesday.
The bill now goes to President Obama, who is expected to sign it.
Groups Call for Repeal of Medicare Payment Advisory Board
The Affordable Care Act's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is a bad idea and should be repealed, according to a coalition of more than 600 healthcare organizations.
"IPAB is not a tool to improve the value of the Medicare program," Mary Grealy, president of the Healthcare Leadership Council, the group that is spearheading the repeal push, said during a teleconference last week. "Rather, it's a blunt instrument intended to reduce what Medicare pays for treatment. IPAB was a fatally flawed concept from its inception, and now, as we're on the verge of its activation, it's a very real danger and needs to be prevented."
In addition to concerns that the group would operate with a total lack of transparency, IPAB members cannot hold another job while they're serving on IPAB, so policy experts in academia would be barred from serving on it," said Andrew Sperling, director of federal affairs at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a mental health advocacy group in Arlington, Va.
"So for lack of a better term, dumbing down the expertise would be part of this panel," he added.
Opioid Overdose Deaths Keep Climbing, Says CDC
The number of people dying from opioid and heroin overdoses continues to rise according to new CDC data released on Thursday.
In 2015, approximately 33,091 people died from overdoses associated with illegal or prescribed opioids. Overdose from prescription opioids saw only a slight uptick, signaling that efforts to reign in their use may be working, noted a White House press release.
"Prescription opioid misuse and use of heroin and illicitly manufactured fentanyl are intertwined and deeply troubling problems," said CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH. "We need to drastically improve both the treatment of pain and the treatment of opioid use disorders and increase the use of naloxone to reverse opioid overdose. We must also work collaboratively with our public safety partners to further reduce access to illicit opioids."
President Obama has been pressing for $1 billion in new funding to increase access to opioid treatment since February, said Michael Botticelli, the Director of National Drug Control Policy for the White House.
"This week Congress finally acted on the President's request. The Administration will work to get this new funding out to States as quickly as possible to make sure that every American who wants treatment for an opioid use disorder is able to get it."
Next Week
On Monday, the Alliance for Health Reform will discuss the role of social determinants of health.
And the Association of Academic Health Centers and the GW Workforce Health Institute will co-host a panel to discuss recent developments and potential next steps in graduate medical education.