Dr Angus Worthing: Congressional Budget Allocation for Healthcare

Transcript:

Former CMS head Andy Slavitt recently spoke about the need for a “champion” in Congress who can ensure sufficient budget allocation for healthcare. Do you agree?

I do, I think Andy Slavitt has a lot of good ideas about healthcare reform in the US. I think we do need champions in Congress right now to help fix the system. One important part, as we talk about biosimilars, is that we need to support the Food and Drug Administration as it hires experts that are needed to both review and approve safe and effective drugs—that’ll be biosimilars that we use, but also that will create guidances for manufacturers to come up with the right clinical trials and clinical trial designs to prove and give confidence to doctors and patients that the drugs work effectively. So, I think it’s important to fund the agency appropriately and we need champions in Congress to do that. Fortunately, this Congress has already authorized the Biosimilar User Fee Agreement of 2017, and the President signed it into law. So, that’s an important first step to that process.