Budget

A bill to cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice suits met the same opposition from states'-rights conservatives at a House Judiciary Committee markup on Tuesday (March 22) as it did in 2011 when the GOP tried to pass the bill.

Every Democrat on the Senate health committee has signed on to legislation that would provide an additional $5 billion annually for a handful of programs at FDA and the National Institutes of Health for the next 10 years.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) raised concerns Thursday that FDA doesn't have enough money to implement the food safety law, noting at an appropriations hearing that the agency has received less than half of what the Congressional Budget Office said would be needed to implement the Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA).

The White House laid out as part of its 2017 budget request ways to lower prescription drug costs for state Medicaid programs, coming as the program plays into election-year politics and becomes embroiled in the drug pricing debate.

The White House on Tuesday (Feb. 9) touted plans to increase funding for the National Institutes of Health in fiscal 2017, but that bump is contingent upon Congress approving mandatory funding for the agency, a move research advocates worry would not materialize on Capitol Hill.

HHS is asking Congress for the authority to spend $535 million on the health insurance marketplaces as part of a $2.1 billion fiscal 2017 budget for the exchanges that aims to bring in $1.6 billion in user fees from insurers.

The White House fiscal 2017 budget continues the administration's push for Medicaid expansion with an expected proposal to offer three years of full federal funding for newly eligible beneficiaries to states who have not yet expanded, addresses the substance abuse crisis, extends funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program through fiscal 2019, and includes an unexpected proposal to let states and the federal government jointly negotiate to lower the price of Medicaid drugs.

With a request of $5.1 billion for FDA, President Barack Obama's fiscal year 2017 budget proposal seeks a $358 billion funding bump for FDA with a focus on medical product safety, food safety, the vice president's cancer “moonshot” initiative and precision medicine.

The Senate health committee on Tuesday (Feb. 9) will hold the first installment of a long-awaited markup of its counterpart to the House-passed Cures legislation, with the committee's lineup including a revised draft of legislation to improve electronic health records, as well as bipartisan bills to streamline FDA's reviews of innovate medical devices, bolster FDA's oversight of reused devices, accelerate the approval process of genetically targeted drugs, identify and remove barriers faced by the next generation of researchers within the National Institutes of Health, among other issues.