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Category: Health/Medical

Home for the Holidays?

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The plan is for Congress to finish all its work for the year this week, with a stopgap spending measure to fund the government through next Spring. When in Spring? That’s still a very good question. 

The House Republicans held a conference meeting on Friday that did not resolve how long the stopgap should last or precisely what level of spending it should allow. Without conference agreement, only a handful of House and Senate GOP leaders and staff will decide the substance of a bill that will shape government spending for at least the better part of the current fiscal year. 

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said his goal is to complete all House action by Thursday, but the true deadline is this midnight on Friday, December 9th. That is when the previous CR expires. Failure to pass a new bill would trigger a government shutdown. The new measure will most likely extend current funding levels for most federal agencies through sometime between March and May. A precise timeline had yet to be decided.

Writing the continuing resolution, which generally forbids any new projects, also requires including provisions that allow agencies to make adjustments in their spending to meet changing needs; these are called anomalies. The Pentagon already has complained to budget writers that a long-term stopgap risks doing harm to needed weapons programs and troops currently deployed overseas. While each CR does have a limited amount of anomalies, do not expect broad sweeping increases, such as a multi-billion increase to NIH. 

As the House takes the first steps on the CR, the Senate will consider both 21st Century Cures and the NDAA conference report this week.

Cures Passes House

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Last night, the House approved, 392-26, the 21st Century Cures Act, amended by a Manager’s Amendment submitted by House Energy and Commerce Chair Fred Upton (R-MI). While the Manager’s Amendment modifies slightly the allocation of funding in the NIH Innovation Account on an annual basis, it maintains the overall level of funding in the Account at a total of $4.796 billion between FYs 2017 and 2026. For the Precision Medicine Initiative, the Amendment provides $1.455 billion between FYs 2017 and 2026; for BRAIN, $1.511 billion between FYs 2017 and 2026; for cancer research, $1.8 billion between FYs 2017 and 2023; and for clinical research to advance regenerative medicine using adult stem cells, the Amendment provides $30 million between FYs 2017 and 2020.

The overwhelming vote tally gained more Republican votes and registered the same level of Democratic support when compared to the vote on a previous 2015 bill version (HR 6).

The legislation now moves to the Senate for consideration next week.

White House Supports Cures

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Late yesterday, the White House issued a Statement of Administrative Policy (SAP) in support of the 21st Century Cures legislation, which is on the House Floor today.

The SAP expressly calls out the Innovation Fund in the measure, which targets funding for several of the Administration’s health care priorities, as a highlight of the measure.

Read the SAP here. 

No Additional Funding for NIH in CR

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Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS subcommittee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-MO) has said today that the CR will not include the $2b bump to NIH that was included in the Senate bill. The CR, in whatever duration, should contain level funding of $32.084b or FY 2016 levels. There has been a research and health community effort to increase funding for NIH as an anomaly to the CR, but Blunt said today that it will not happen.

While this does not mean that an ultimate increase to NIH will not happen in a final FY 2017 package, it will not happen in the stopgap spending measure.

Additionally, there is now tension between the House and Senate as to when to end the CR. House is looking towards a March ending and the Senate wants a May date. 

They’re BACK & 21st Century Cures to be Considered by the House

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Congress is back today for the remainder of its lame-duck session. While both the House and Senate are slated to be in session until December 16, Republicans appear content to run out the clock until President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in on January 20, which could make for a much shorter and less eventful lame duck session.

Congress still has a handful of legislative priorities to take care of before the end of this Congress, including passing a final National Defense Authorization Act and a government funding bill. The final fiscal 2017 defense policy bill could surface as early as this week. Once finalized, a conference report must be signed by House and Senate negotiators before final floor consideration in both chambers.

The compromise NDAA is expected to ditch contentious riders, including provisions on the greater sage grouse and workplace protections based on sexual orientation. It’s also expected to include $9 billion on top of the Pentagon’s budget request, incorporating the Administration’s $5.8 billion war supplemental request the Obama Administration submitted to Congress on November 10, as well as funding to cover military readiness shortfalls.

It’s still all about the money.  

Additionally, Congress needs to pass a spending bill to fund government by the December 9 to avoid a shutdown. Republican leaders decided before Thanksgiving to move a new continuing resolution (CR) through March, allowing Trump to put his mark on federal spending during his first year in office. Meanwhile, Appropriators and Congressional leadership continue to wrestle with an exact date in March to end the CR as well as if to include the supplemental funding requested by the Obama Administration. 

Agenda for the Week

In the House, lawmakers will consider a compromise bill seeking to spur efforts on medical innovation. A new version of the 21st Century Cures measure (HR 6) emerged on Friday after private negotiations among bill supporters and is headed toward a House vote on Wednesday of this week. House Members passed the original bill in 2015, but Senators were unable to complete the assembly their own bill.

The newly revised version tweaks funding, offsets and other provisions of the package seeking to revamp Food and Drug Administration procedures for approving new drugs and boosting biomedical research efforts of the National Institutes of Health.

The main order of business on the Senate floor is a bill that would study expanding a program to provide specialized medical treatments to rural and medically underserved communities.