Congress

House Democrats are still negotiating a possible delay or repeal of three controversial health care taxes in a year-end spending package, but advocates for the tax delays worry that negotiations could be bumped into early 2020 due to an increasingly short timeline to pass a difficult spending bill or package and House and Senate leadership prioritizing other legislation.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other conservative lawmakers intend to pursue an expansion of FDA’s Parallel Track program if Stephen Hahn is appointed as FDA commissioner, even though FDA already has similar programs, such as Expanded Access, already in place, as well as a new pilot program, Project Facilitate.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus expressed optimism it would get at least one of its amendments added to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drug pricing bill, following a meeting between caucus leaders and the California Democrat Tuesday afternoon (Dec.10).

The updated version of the Senate health committee’s drug pricing bill includes myriad new tobacco-related proposals that, among other things, aim to improve age verification, place labeling and advertising restrictions on electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products, prevent online sales of e-cigarettes to children and require FDA to submit user fee financial reports for fiscal 2020 to Congress.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is expected to unveil legislation to improve nursing home oversight, possibly before the end of the year, according to a source working on the legislation.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), who advocated for arbitration along with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), expressed frustration that hospitals and providers are unhappy with the House and Senate surprise billing compromise, noting that most of the policies providers were pushing for made it into the final bill.

The latest version of the Senate health committee’s drug pricing legislation no longer contains three key provisions: one that would give FDA new authority to address outdated drug labeling, another that would exempt biologic products from having to follow U.S. Pharmacopeial standards and a third that would stop brand drug makers from inappropriately using FDA citizen petitions to delay generic competition, based on a section-by-section of the bill released Monday (Dec. 9).

The Senate health committee’s updated cost-cutting package includes provisions from both Senate and House bills to improve maternal health, including calls for various HHS grant programs to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity rates.

The House and Senate surprise billing compromise sets a benchmark payment rate for out-of-network bills at the median in-network rate for a geographic area, and the insurer or provider can move to an independent dispute resolution process if the median in-network payment is above $750.