Opinion: Administrative delays threaten the promise of the 21st Century Cures Act
When President Barack Obama signed the landmark 21st Century Cures Act into law in December 2016, he was surrounded by elated Republican and Democratic lawmakers. At the time, Obama said the measure would bring “to reality the possibility of new breakthroughs to some of the greatest health challenges of our time.”
Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, who chairs the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education Labor, and Pensions, hailed the act as “a Christmas miracle … that will help virtually every American family.”
Their statements weren’t hyperbole. The bipartisan medical innovation package was chock-full of policies to modernize the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, combat the nationwide opioid epidemic, advance Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative, and speed approval of new, lifesaving therapies for the most devastating of diseases.
