Senate Skips Critical Measures In Step-By-Step 'Cures'
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
While many stakeholders in the biomedical community were happy just to see the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee finally unveil a plan for moving forward with legislation aimed at making changes at the FDA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) intended to accelerate medical innovation, there also was disappointment that the step-by-step strategy proposed by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the panel's chairman, ignores several measures, like one focused on antibiotics development, that were included in a mega-bill adopted by the House last July – the 21st Century Cures Act.