House Lawmakers Want Congress To Pass 'Cures' Package By July 4 Recess

To avoid election turbulence, House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-MI) and Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) hope Congress passes by July 4 a bill that combines the House's 21st Century Cures Act and the Senate's Innovation for Healthier Americans Act.

The two lawmakers, along with Energy & Commerce ranking Democrat Frank Pallone (NJ), spoke Wednesday (March 23) at an event their committee organized on children and teens with rare diseases.

DeGette told the audience of patient advocates that “we still need you to help us to push this over the finish line. Fred and I think it needs to happen before July 4 recess. You may have noticed we're in a political season here and we want to get this done as soon as possible.”

The House passed the 21st Century Cures bill last summer. The Senate health committee has held two markups of several health innovation bills as part of its Innovation for Healthier Americans initiative, and it is scheduled to hold a third markup on April 6. Upton said the Senate will combine the bills and bring that package to the Senate floor, then the two chambers will work out differences between their bills during conference.

Pallone said House lawmakers told the Vice President Joe Biden, along with Senate health committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and ranking Democrat Patty Murray (WA), that they wanted to “marry the two bills” and include legislation to support the vice president's cancer initiative.

Degette touted a provision in the Cures bill that provides the National Institutes of Health with $8.75 billion in mandatory funding over five years. DeGette added that she hopes, with the help of the vice president, that funding would increase to help the agency target cancer and other diseases. In an earlier version of the bill, NIH was slated to receive $10 billion, but that was lowered shortly before the legislation went to the House floor.

Democratic Senate health committee members have made inclusion of the funding provisions a prerequisite for their support of the broader health innovation package moving out of committee, but Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is punting the funding issue to the Senate floor. Senate Budget Committee Chair Mike Enzi (R-WY), who also sits on the health committee, said the upper chamber should review old programs for effectiveness before funding new initiatives.

Upton's and DeGette's push comes after several top officials for Public Citizen wrote Feb. 8 to the Senate health committee concerned that the upper chamber might pass a number of small bills as a counterpart to 21st Century Cures in an effort to conference with the much broader House bill, which the group doesn't support.

"Other Senate passed bills should not be combined and conferenced with the 21st Century Cures legislation. This legislation carries harmful provisions that put patient lives at risk and compromise public health and should not become law," Vijay Das and Lisa Gilbert, both members of the group's Congress Watch, and Sarah Sorcher and Michael Carome, both members of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, wrote.