Congress

If Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus (D-MT) moves forward with efforts to reduce confusion in the Medicare Drug benefit program, he may have a fast friend in first-term Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

The House Wednesday (Jan. 31) passed a fiscal 2007 spending measure that grants FDA a $76 million budget increase over fiscal 2006 levels to cover the cost of pay increases, prevents the agency from laying off employees, and helps FDA keep up with general costs and workload. Adding industry user fees brings the total increase to $127 million.

The move is good news for FDA, as the continuing resolution would simply extend fiscal 2006 spending levels through the end of this fiscal year for many other agencies.

Senate health committee leaders Thursday (Feb. 1) reintroduced drug safety legislation with what drug lobbyists describe as only technical changes to last year's version, even though industry lobbied for changes that would make it more difficult for FDA to fine companies for shirking post-market commitments.

President Bush's soon-to-be-unveiled 2008 budget proposal for Medicare, expected to slash about $75 billion from Medicare and Medicaid, likely will include provisions that would require states to do more to garner full State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) federal funding and cut Part A and Part B reimbursements for drugs and services, according to various health care lobbyists and congressional staffers.

The pharmacy benefit management company Express Scripts last week began circulating among lawmakers a study on the financial impact of permitting FDA to approve biogenerics that says American consumers could save $71 billion over 10 years if generic versions of treatments for four diseases or conditions were on the market.

To a largely friendly crowd of advocates for poor patients and children this Friday morning, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) suggested there is no "higher domestic priority" than reauthorizing and expanding the state children's health insurance program (SCHIP), which will be taken up Feb. 1 by the Senate Finance Committee.

In what one radio reporter referred to as a "rousing" speech, Kennedy also suggested that there is an intrinsic link between raising the minimum wage and improving the health status of the 9 million uninsured children in America.

The Teamsters have begun lobbying Congress to pass new food worker safety measures in 2007. A Teamsters source said the union is concerned food processing industry practices are putting workers at risk for E. Coli exposure.

Constant pressure in the food processing industry to step up production leads to employees not following proper safety procedures, such as ensuring personal protective equipment that they removed during a bathroom break has been put back on before returning to work, the source said.

Many of the organizations running "continuing medical education" programs fail to ensure that companies are not using the programs to promote their products, the Accreditation Council for Continued Medical Education told Senate Finance Committee leaders. CME programs are aimed at doctors and are supposed to be independent and balanced, but the committee is worried companies use the programs to promote their products off label.

Facing a Democratically controlled Congress for the first time in his White House tenure, President Bush in his State of the Union speech Tuesday told a well-behaved ocean of lawmakers that he wants to win a war in Iraq, tackle climate change, reduce gasoline consumption, and alter the tax code to make health insurance affordable for more Americans. But on the last point -- like the first -- the Democrats are already lining up in opposition.