Congresswoman Matsui Votes in Favor of 21st Century Cures Legislation
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, May 21, 2015
CONTACT: JULIE EDDY
(202) 225-7163
Congresswoman Matsui Votes in Favor of 21st Century Cures Legislation
Today, Congresswoman Doris Matsui (CA-06) voted to pass the 21st Century Cures Act out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The legislation modernizes the research and development processes at both the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), while also funding those agencies to make these needed changes, thereby allowing the most promising medical breakthroughs to reach those who need them the most.
Congresswoman Matsui worked to ensure that a potentially harmful last-minute provision relating to the 340B drug pricing program was removed. The 340B program requires drug manufacturers to provide drugs to eligible safety net hospitals and clinics at significantly reduced prices. Congresswoman Matsui looks forward to continuing to work with the Committee to preserve the integrity of the 340B program, but firmly believes that making changes at the last minute would have been irresponsible.
The 21st Century Cures Act also includes provisions that Congresswoman Matsui authored with a bipartisan Energy and Commerce Telehealth Working Group to take the first steps towards opening up telehealth to Medicare reimbursement. Finally, Congresswoman Matsui supports the new provisions aimed at addressing health disparities and including women and minorities in the medical research workforce.
The following are Congresswoman Matsui's remarks from today's Energy and Commerce Committee markup:
"The NIH funding in this legislation is a great accomplishment, and I congratulate everyone who has been involved in this. Investment in research is undoubtedly the first step in reaching cures. The second step is development, which FDA oversees. I am pleased that we included funding for FDA in this bill. This bill makes important changes to FDA's processes, and we need to make sure that we are not creating unfunded mandates that hinder FDA's ability to follow through on what we are asking the agency to do.
Also, Mr. Chairman, thank you for removing the 340B provision from this amendment. 340B is a vital program for our nation's safety net hospitals and clinics, such as the Ryan White Clinics and Hemophilia Treatment Centers. The 340B program was designed to allow clinics and safety net hospitals to stretch scarce resources in order to provide vital services to the underserved. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your attention to this important program, but I did have concerns about making changes to the program overnight. We do need to ensure that the Health Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA, has the authority to administer and oversee this program. I look forward to working with my colleagues that care about 340B, and stakeholders, to come up with the right policy changes to preserve and strengthen the intent of the program.
The telehealth language in 21st Century Cures recognizes that telehealth is the delivery of safe, effective, quality health care services, by a health care provider using technology as the mode of delivery. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on the Telehealth Working Group to build on that concept. Essential to these efforts is true communication and care coordination between providers, which can't be done if electronic health records and systems are not truly interoperable I will be continuing to work on that provision as well.
We know that many diseases have gender based differences. For example, Alzheimer's disease disproportionately affects women, and recent studies suggest that women may be affected by Alzheimer's differently than men. We need to ensure that those differences are taken into account and that we have a diverse workforce to address issues such as these."
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