Congress

An aide to Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-MT) said Tuesday (May 22) the lawmaker is working to keep in the Senate's evolving rewrite of the war supplemental bill a provision allocating $650 million in funding to cover a projected shortfall in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Capitulating to White House objections, Democrats had dropped a number of domestic provisions from the supplemental, and earlier reports indicated SCHIP might be among them.

Gearing up for a Tuesday showdown with congressional critics of Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, CMS officials defended the controversial program Monday (May 21), citing the additional benefits offered to vulnerable populations and the coordination of care available for patients with multiple chronic illnesses.

Critics of the program contend the highly subsidized program does more to benefit insurers than patients, and a number of key Democrats are eyeing an end to the federal subsidies as a method to pay for other Medicare-related legislation this year.

Some industry lobbyists are worried a provision in the Senate FDA bill that uses sales figures to cut the market protection incentive afforded drug makers that do pediatric research could set a precedent for other types of "exclusivities."

The lobbyists hope the House will revisit the provision when it drafts its version of the bill passed by the Senate last week. S. 1082 includes provisions authorizing the collection of user fees and pediatric research laws, as well as other provisions on drug safety, food safety, clinical trial registries and drug patent reforms.

House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee lawmakers hinted Wednesday (May 16) they may try to add post-market safety, device reuse and pediatric research provisions when they mark up device user fee reauthorization legislation. Democrats grilled FDA on why its user fee proposal does not set aside money for post-market safety and demanded the agency immediately hand over long over-due reports on how user fees have been used in the past for post-market surveillance and third-party inspection activities.

The Democrats' $2.9 trillion spending blueprint for fiscal 2008 passed both the House and Senate Thursday (May 17), authorizing up to $50 billion for SCHIP reauthorization as well as proposing a number of additional Medicare reforms that include a boost in physician payments and a kickstart to comparative effectiveness research. But the resolution is simply an outline, leaving the difficult decisions to committee leaders who will have to find offsets for any new spending they propose.

The conceptual agreement for free trade agreements worked out between House Ways & Means Committee Chair Charles Rangel (D-NY) and the Bush administration would alter three key intellectual property protection provisions in pending FTAs in ways that would make it easier for generic drugs to win marketing approval.

Critics of current FTAs have charged that they favor the rights of U.S. brand-name drug makers in overseas markets at the expense of generic drug companies.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is launching a congressional task force on intravenous immune globulin (IVIG) in an effort to refocus Congress' attention on access problems outlined in a recent HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) report. A newly formed advocacy group, meanwhile, will enter the debate at an HHS advisory panel meeting Thursday (May 10).

Congress will likely dial back 2008 payments to all Medicare providers, except for physicians, in order to achieve $100 billion in savings to reauthorize SCHIP and bail out physician payments, set to plummet by 10 percent next year, a key lawmaker and health care lobbyists say. House Ways & Means health subcommittee chair Pete Stark (D-CA) told Inside CMS Thursday (May 10) "there is no area that can have a full update … every area has to be reviewed," and said he hoped providers would help divvy up the cuts.

Sens. Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Carl Levin (D-MI) are pushing legislation that would require CMS to screen all Medicare provider payments through the Treasury Department in a bid to identify tax cheats and collect on outstanding debts by garnishing improper reimbursements. The bill arrives as Democratic leaders have stepped up efforts to close the tax gap in order to fund a number of 2008 budget priorities -- including a Medicare physician payment fix and SCHIP reauthorization -- still in search of offsets.