Deal Reached On FDA User Fee Renewal

US House and Senate committee leaders have finally come to an agreement on user fee reauthorization, just days ahead of when the current package will expire. The hitch: The deal isn’t expected to include some elements that the medtech industry had lobbied for, such as additional diagnostic oversight for the Food and Drug Administration.

The compromise, which was announced late last week, will incorporate user fee reauthorization measures into a must-pass stopgap funding bill scheduled for a vote before the end of September. It’s expected to closely resemble a “skinny” reauthorization measure first put forward by Sen. Richard Burr, R-NC, in July. Burr, who is the minority leader on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, proposed the stripped-down legislation as a move to counter riders in the user fee package passed by the HELP committee that he saw as overly partisan, such as a drug-pricing provision