This year, Congress will have to reauthorize the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), which funds the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) drug approval process. As noted by Amanda Kronquist, a Heritage Health Policy Graduate Fellow, the FDA drug approval process has become “increasingly unpredictable, uncertain, and inefficient.” The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health held its first hearing this year on the topic yesterday. It heard from the FDA commissioner and others in the field on the PDUFA reauthorization and its effect on jobs, innovation, and patients. In …
Conservatives, including The Heritage Foundation, support reforming Medicare to provide seniors with a defined contribution to apply to the health care plan of their choice. This approach would address the program’s insolvency, and it is superior to other options—including the President’s plan to allow an unelected board of officials to ratchet down spending—because it would allow consumer choice to catalyze patient-centered innovations and better value in the health care system. Among the straw man arguments liberals have made against this “premium-support” model is the claim that it would be too …
Following passage of a one-thousand-page omnibus spending bill, the Senate reconvened to continue consideration of HR 3590, the Senate health bill. Middle Class Taxes. Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) offered an amendment to recommit the Senate health bill back to the Senate Finance Committee with instructions to protect Americans who make less than $250,000 from tax hikes in the bill. In effect, the Crapo amendment would reinforce President Obama’s high-profile promise that Americans making less than $250,000 would not face tax increases. In the Senate health bill, there are several provisions …
