US House poised to pass 21st Century Cures health bill

Elizabeth Warren wondered on the U.S. Senate floor Monday evening.

The legislation, dubbed 21st Century Cures, provides almost $5 billion for the National Institutes of Health to accelerate research into major diseases, including $1.8 billion for Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s “moonshot” project on cancer, and $500 million for the Food and Drug Administration to make its approval process more efficient.

Money to pay for the bill will be offset by reductions in other spending, including Medicaid payments for some medical equipment and through the sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, something the administration said “continues a bad precedent of selling off longer term energy security assets to satisfy near term budget scoring needs”. After receiving strong support in the House, this bill now heads to the Senate for final approval, expected in the coming days, the congressmsn said.

The administration’s letter of support cited problems with the legislation but said that some provisions, such as the potential relaxation of rules governing off-label marketing of medical products, have been modified “to address concerns”. “Now, we face a choice”.

“It is a warped sense of justice in America that we would eliminate healthcare prevention funds to pay for healthcare research funds”, he said. Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said the bill would weaken regulations on medical devices, allow drugs to be approved with only limited evidence of the drug’s safety and efficacy, and rush the use of new and unproven antibiotics.

The multibillion-dollar, 1,000-page bill took two years to negotiate with the last compromise coming just days before the House vote.

Republicans have portrayed the mental health bill, sponsored by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), as their response to mass shootings, though that messaging has been emphasized less now that it is part of a larger package.

Walden has held seven roundtable meetings with patients and health care professionals in southern, central, and eastern OR to solicit feedback.

“The Cancer Moonshot is emblematic of the way our nation should feel about medical progress”, says Ellie Dehoney, vice president of policy and advocacy at Research!America. “There are more examples than I can count”. It wasn’t until I was an adult with numerous convictions for drugs, and after multiple attempts at treatment, did I finally get the help I needed through dual diagnosis treatment program where they got to the core of my addiction and why I was using drugs.

“While many harmful provisions have been improved or removed … there are still many provisions in the renegotiated bill that remain problematic for public health”, Public Citizen noted in a statement.

In a written statement, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the bill “is not perfect” but contains “advances in health that far outweigh these concerns”.

Supporters hailed the mental health reforms as the most significant changes in decades. Extortion is holding those exact same proposals hostage unless everyone agrees to special favors for campaign donors and giveaways to the richest drug companies in the world. “Cornyn called for more civility”. “This bill is about doing what drug companies and (political) donors want”.

The White House on Wednesday urged passage in the Senate. But Republicans don’t have majority support in this country.

Former presidential candidate Sen. Rather, it represented a form of extortion, she said. “They didn’t send us here to whimper, whine, or grovel”.

“It’s really unfortunate how desperate patients, and desperate parents of patients with rare diseases, have been used to lobby for a bill thinking that it’s actually going to benefit them when it isn’t”, she said. “It has momentum right now, and if we don’t grab the opportunity, we may not have another opportunity soon”.

The 21st Century Cures Act covers everything from a ” cancer moonshot” created to cure that dreaded disease to money to address the nation’s opioid addiction crisis to a precision medicine initiative.