Sweeping Health Measure, Backed by Obama, Passes Senate
The US Senate has approved health care legislation designed to augment funding for disease research, close gaps in the mental health system and overhaul the regulatory system for drugs and medical devices. The 21st Centure Cures Act will battle the opioid epidemic and give health institutes the ability to finance high-risk but high-reward research to take larger steps towards cures and treatments for serious illnesses. A new secretary for mental health and substance abuse will be appointed, and direct agencies to give equal coverage for mental and physical illnesses. The Food and Drug Administration will be able to shorten the length of time for approval for new drugs or new uses for medication, expediting potential cures and life-saving treatments. However, no provision was made for the skyrocketing price of drugs from pharmaceutical companies, and there has been no guarantee made that the $4.8bn granted to the National Institutes of Health will be paid.

WASHINGTON — The Senate approved complex health care legislation on Wednesday that would increase funding for disease research, address weaknesses in the nation’s mental health systems and vastly alter the regulatory system for drugs and medical devices. The vote sealed a final legislative victory for President Obama, who strongly supported the bill against objections from many liberal Democrats and consumer groups.

In many ways the bill, known as the 21st Century Cures Act, is a return to a more classic approach to legislation, with policy victories and some disappointments for both parties, and potential benefits for nearly every American whose life has been touched by illness, drug addiction and mental health issues. Years in the making, the measure passed 94 to 5 after being overwhelmingly approved by the House last week.

One major winner — and a donor to both parties — was the pharmaceutical industry; its role set off fierce but futile opposition by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. On many of the areas addressed by the bill, pharmaceutical companies were in step with the interests of patients desperate for cures, an unusual and emotionally charged alliance between an industry and its consumers.

The bill was a test of Ms. Warren’s muscle, exercised from the far left of the Senate Democratic caucus, and it is one that did not go well. “I will fight it,” she said of the bill last week on the Senate floor, “because I know the difference between compromise and extortion.”