House passes 21st Century Cures bill, funding medical research and fighting drug epidemic

The House overwhelmingly approved a medical-innovation bill Wednesday that fast-tracks regulatory approval of groundbreaking drugs, ushers in bipartisan mental health reforms and provides $1 billion to tackle America’s prescription-painkiller and heroin epidemic.

The $6.3-billion package enjoys support from the White House and passed on a 392-26 vote, heaping pressure on the Senate to follow suit despite concerns from progressives who say the bill still shortchanges underfunded agencies and amounts to a “handout” for drug companies.

The legislation, dubbed 21st Century Cures, provides nearly $5 billion for the National Institutes of Health to accelerate research into major diseases, including $1.8 billion for Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s “moonshot” project on cancer, and $500 million for the Food and Drug Administration to make its approval process more efficient.

“The clock is ticking. Patients don’t have time. They want answers, they want cures,” said Rep. Fred Upton, Michigan Republican and Energy and Commerce Committee chairman. “This bill, which expedites the approval of drugs and devices, includes literally billions of dollars in additional spending for health research so that we can find the cure and the answers to what patients are demanding today.”

It provides $1 billion in state grants to combat opioids addiction — a key priority for President Obama — and ponies up money for mental health treatment and suicide prevention, while establishing a new assistant secretary for mental health at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said he is eager to send the legislation to Mr. Obama’s desk, as GOP leaders eye a bipartisan win to cap a whirlwind election year in which a legacy-defining trade deal and criminal justice reforms fell by the wayside.

Negotiators cleared one road block Tuesday, removing text in the bill that would have exempted companies from publicly reporting certain payments to doctors. The reporting provisions exist to deter doctors from steering patients toward those companies’ drugs and products.

Yet progressives such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, and Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, said the bill will help drug companies speed their products to market — for instance, by allowing certain drugs to be used for related disease without going through the entire approval process again. But while doing so, it offers no financial relief to consumers struggling with skyrocketing prescription-drug prices.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, this week said his caucus is still working through its concerns.

“We don’t have a bill yet, OK?” he told reporters Tuesday.

New spending in the bill is paid for with $3.5 billion from Obamacare’s prevention and public health fund, as President-elect Donald Trump vows to repeal the health-care law, plus tweaks to Medicare payments and the sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The administration said it didn’t want to tap oil reserves or allow companies to market their drugs for uses that don’t appear on the label, though the bill’s benefits outweighed those concerns.

“With any piece of legislation that is passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by a Democratic president, it’s gonna require some compromise,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

“There are some elements of the bill that the administration does not support. I’m confident that there are some parts of the bill that some Republicans don’t support either. But at the end of the day, I think the bill will get overall support from Democrats and Republicans because of some of some of the priorities that I’ve identified,” he said.

• Dave Boyer contributed to this report.