Rep. Diana DeGette Crosses the Aisle, Achieves a Huge Win on the Prescription Drug Front
Congresswoman Diana DeGette has plenty to crow about after the Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved her bill aimed at modernizing the federal government’s approach to biomedical research.
The committee on Thursday voted 51-0 to approve the 21st Century Cures Act, which is aimed at streamlining the Food and Drug Administration’s approval process for new drugs.
“That is an amazing accomplishment,” Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said, according to The Hill, noting that he had been on the committee for 28 years and had never before seen a major bill pass without a single “nay” vote.
DeGette, a Denver Democrat, had worked with the committee’s chairman, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., on the bill for over a year, even taking heat for letting the Republicans “get a win.”
The Post’s Washington reporter, Mark Matthews, wrote about their effort in February, outlining the hurdles they faced.
"The two lawmakers and their allies have held eight hearings, hosted about 20 roundtable discussions and accepted more than 100 issue papers from the medical community.
But now — with their policy experts getting down to the painstaking work of actually writing the legislation — it remains an open question whether the promise of their collaboration actually has a chance of becoming law.
Not only does the proposal face the usual array of political obstacles, but reforming medical research means negotiating with dozens of well-funded special-interest groups — each with a separate, and often conflicting, agenda."
And the Post covered the hearing last week, noting DeGette and Upton said they had a bipartisan agreement to deliver $10 billion in new resources for the National Institutes of Health over five years.
That led to this tweet from Colorado’s U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner:
The bill appeared in trouble as late as the day before the vote. Democrats had expressed concern that the bill could increase burdens on the FDA, but did not provide it with any increased funding. But DeGette spent the next 24 hours working with her caucus on funding issues.
The bill now goes to the full House.
“In the last century, American medicine leapt from medicine shows to the mapping of the human genome,” DeGette said in a news release after the bill’s passage.
“With the 21st Century Cures Act, we seek to support the biomedical community in making a similar leap forward in this next century. With billions in support for our premier research and development institutions and comprehensive reform of our systems, 21st Century Cures will make a real difference in the lives of patients and their families.”