STAT+: Pharma critic Bernie Sanders is set to hold major sway over FDA funding bill — SkimNews
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- Democrats won a landslide in the midterm elections, and senior party members are positioned to shape negotiations over the FDA’s user-fee funding.
- Bernie Sanders is likely to lead the Senate health committee and is one of the few lawmakers who have opposed the core premise of FDA user fees.
- FDA collects user fees from pharmaceutical companies to fund the agency’s reviews of their medicines.
- Prescription User Fee Drug Act must be renewed before Sept. 30, and the article links failure to renew with disruption of the FDA’s ability to approve medicines.
- STAT News also identifies Sanders and Wyden as Medicare for All backers set to take charge of key committees, reinforcing the committee-leadership context in this story.
Why it matters: Pharmaceutical companies pay the user fees that finance FDA medicine reviews, making the Sept. 30 renewal deadline consequential for the agency and drug makers. Sanders’s likely committee leadership places a lawmaker who rejects the fee premise over that funding mechanism; the article says nonrenewal can disrupt the FDA’s medicine-approval process.
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