FDA Reform Pledged "This Congress"

The chairman of the House Commerce Committee, Representative Thomas Bliley, has promised the National Committee for Quality Health Care that during the current session of Congress "there will - repeat there will - be reforms" in the way the Food and Drug Administration operates.

While the FDA undoubtedly has an important mission, he said, there is increasing evidence that it has lost sight of it. "It breaks my heart when I think of American citizens having to go to Switzerland or Mexico to get the drugs or devices they need to stay alive, because the Washington bureaucracy won't approve them." He said the Committee's oversight subcommittee could start hearings on this issue by the end of the month, and added that one of the questions to be put to FDA management would be why the drug approval process has not improved since the agency has been charging user fees.

Rep Bliley told the NCQHA (which consists of leaders from industry groups such as Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Labs and the Voluntary Hospitals of America) that the Committee's Republicans and conservative Democrats stopped Representatives John Dingell and Henry Waxman last year, and it was the only major committee not to mark up a version of President Clinton's health care reform bill. But, he added, the Committee's work is not done, and to reach the goal of a balanced budget, major changes must be made in the Medicaid program. However surgery, not amputation, is needed; there are no incentives in the system for beneficiaries to receive primary and preventative care.