WASHINGTON — Getting a big piece of legislation through Congress is never easy, but U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette is betting her signature bill of the session — an overhaul of the way medical research is done nationally — has a better shot than most.
The Colorado Democrat partnered with Republican Fred Upton of Michigan to write the bill, and the two veteran lawmakers are shooting for a House vote as early as Friday.
There are a few reasons for her to feel optimistic — 230 in fact. That’s the number of co-sponsors who put their names on the bill, which is a dozen more than the 218 votes usually needed for passage in the House.
And the supporters are split almost evenly between the two major parties: 121 Democrats and 109 Republicans, according to federal records.
“Disease doesn’t discriminate between political parties. Democrats and Republicans have all felt disease in their own family,” she said.
Now, DeGette said the goal is to run up the score in the House so she and Upton can put pressure on the U.S. Senate to take up their phonebook of a bill.
While the upper chamber has looked at many of the same issues in a piecemeal fashion, the measures are not put together in one legislative package like the 21st Century Cures Act.
“They don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” said DeGette of the Senate.
The overarching goal of the bill, she said, is to “speed up the research (time) from the lab to the clinic (and) focus on getting drugs and devices to patients more quickly.”
To do that, the legislation prescribes a number of solutions.
It would provide economic incentives, such as extending the highly profitable “exclusivity periods” for certain drugs, so that pharmaceutical companies would be more inclined to find cures for rare diseases.
The measure also would set guidelines on the development of medical apps for computers and mobile devices, as well as make it easier for researchers to conduct clinical trials — by reducing paperwork requirements, for example.
“Americans deserve a (medical research) system second to none,” Upton said following the bill’s 51-0 passage in the House Energy and Commerce committee, which he chairs. “We can and must do better. The time for 21st Century Cures is now.”
Still, an overwhelming vote in the full House is not guaranteed.
There have been rumblings from budget hawks about plans to fund the bill, notably its plan to sell oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The White House highlighted similar concerns in a statement released Wednesday.
“The Administration reiterates the critical importance of making the investments necessary to modernize the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and ensure it continues to support U.S. energy security,” read the statement.
Mark K. Matthews: 202-662-8907, mmatthews@denverpost.com or twitter.com/mkmatthews
