Tsunami Warning, Education, and Research Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I wish to start by expressing my appreciation to all of my colleagues who have worked so hard on the priorities in the 21st Century Cures bill, including investing in tackling our hardest to treat diseases, confronting the opioid epidemic, strengthening mental health care, and advancing medical innovation.

The legislation that we will be voting on either really late tonight or tomorrow morning takes important steps to improve the care that patients receive.

I am very grateful to every Senator and Member of Congress who worked across the aisle to make this legislation the best it could be for those whom we serve. In particular, I want to express my heartfelt thanks to Vice President Joe Biden. Not everyone has the strength to respond to profound personal tragedy by doing even more to protect and help others, but that is exactly what he has done. I know we are all grateful for and inspired by his leadership, and I am confident it has given a lot of families hope, knowing that Joe Biden is fighting for them and their loved ones.

Of course, I want to acknowledge and thank the chairman of the HELP Committee, Senator Alexander, for his work and leadership on this bill, as well as the Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, Ranking Member Frank Pallone, and Congresswoman Diana DeGette.

I am proud of our country's history of lifesaving public health initiatives and world-changing medical innovation. From eradicating smallpox to mapping the human genome, we have risen to challenges and found ways to combat seemingly unbeatable diseases and public health threats. There is no question we are a strong country for that.

The bill we are talking about today, while far from perfect, gives us the chance to build on that tradition of leadership and respond to some urgent health challenges we face right now. One of those is the opioid epidemic. Like many of my colleagues, I have heard from far too many families and local leaders in my home State about the ways that opioid use disorders are ruining lives and tearing families apart. My constituent Penny LeGate, whose daughter Marah died of an overdose at the age of 19, said that this crisis can happen anywhere and it is everywhere. That is the same thing I have heard from worried parents and sheriffs and community leaders across Washington State.

I was glad that earlier this year, the Senate passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act to strengthen and improve programs that address opioid addiction. But, as Democrats made clear, improving policy wasn't enough. Tackling this crisis head-on requires putting new investments into these efforts as quickly as possible, and that is what this bill will do. It dedicates $1 billion over 2 years, above and beyond the budget caps, to help States and communities fight back. And critically, we were able to secure changes that ensure this money will go to States based on where it is needed the most.

Many of my colleagues were closely involved with this effort, but in particular I wish to recognize Senators Whitehouse, Shaheen, Baldwin, Markey, Donnelly, and Manchin.

I have also heard from people across Washington State and the country about what a broken mental health system means for them and their families. One constituent whose experience has really stuck with me is Jenny. Jenny is from Olympia, WA, and she was pregnant when her husband began having severe psychotic episodes. Jenny told me that she remembered how striking the differences were between the coordinated, thoughtful care she received as an expectant mother and the confusing patchwork that she and her husband had to navigate to try to help him get better. Jenny's husband cycled in and out of the hospital without effective treatment, and tragically he took his own life while Jenny was in the NICU with their newborn baby.

Jenny's story is unfortunately one of many about families struggling to find quality mental health care for loved ones with mental illness. I am confident that everyone here today has heard these stories, and we know we have to do better.

Our legislation will help expand access to quality care for mental illness and substance use disorders by making it easier for patients to get in touch with providers. It will strengthen coordination between local agencies that are engaged in crisis intervention, and it will make sure that resources are available to strengthen the mental health workforce.

While we weren't able to resolve the IMD exclusion, which is a policy that makes it extremely difficult for States to provide inpatient care to those with mental illness and substance abuse disorders, this bill does change policy so that Federal funding will fully support the physical needs of children in psychiatric facilities.

It also puts in place measures to strengthen our mental health parity law to make sure that health insurance will cover mental health and addiction services when it is needed. Chairman Alexander and I worked with Senators Murphy and Cassidy to move this legislation through our committee this year, and I wish to recognize their commitment and leadership on this issue in particular.

In addition to investing in and tackling the opioid epidemic and putting in place desperately needed reforms to our mental health care system, this legislation makes real investments in tackling the hardest to treat diseases. According to the National Cancer Institute at NIH, 40 percent of men and women in the United States will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lives. Right now, more than 5 million people are living with Alzheimer's. These are truly staggering statistics, and they represent enormous hardship and suffering and loss in nearly every family and community.

Now we have made enormous progress in understanding and treating cancer, and we know more about how the brain works and what diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and traumatic injuries do to human minds, but we can and must do more, and that is exactly what the investments in NIH in this bill will mean.
While this is not the mandatory funding we had hoped for, I want to be very clear: This is real funding. So $4.8 billion is paid for within this bill, targeted to specific NIH initiatives, and available to appropriators above and beyond the budget caps. That means, as a result of this legislation--and thanks, in particular, to the leadership and vision of Vice President Biden--we will be able to invest billions right away in better understanding, preventing, and treating diseases that have impacted so many families.

This bill also ensures that those investments in research will benefit all Americans, including women and children, LGBT individuals, and racial and ethnic minorities.

This bill also puts $500 million above and beyond the budget cap toward helping the FDA meet the same high standards of patient and consumer safety in the face of increasing demands on the agency and new responsibilities under this legislation. As Democrats have made clear throughout this process, upholding the gold standard of FDA approval that patients and families across the country trust is a top priority.

In light of the antibiotic-resistant infections linked to contaminated medical devices called duodenoscopes in Seattle and across the country, it was particularly important to me to make sure that this bill strengthened the FDA's authority to require that medical device manufacturers ensure their products will remain safe after they have gone into repeated uses at our hospitals.

We also fought hard to move many of the other FDA reform policies that are included in this bill in the direction of greater patient and consumer safety. In particular, I was pleased that we were able to take out legislation that would have watered down transparency around drug and device indMr. President, I wish to start by expressing my appreciation to all of my colleagues who have worked so hard on the priorities in the 21st Century Cures bill, including investing in tackling our hardest to treat diseases, confronting the opioid epidemic, strengthening mental health care, and advancing medical innovation.

Now, looking ahead to next year, I plan to monitor implementation of this bill extremely closely, with a focus on making sure the incoming administration adheres to the policies laid out in this bill and upholds the FDA's responsibility to patients and families to ensure our medicines and treatments are safe and effective. This standard has been critical to fueling biomedical innovation in America for over half a century. And while I am disappointed that Republicans were unwilling to take action on this legislation to tackle the high cost of prescription drugs, I am very glad we were able to remove expensive provisions that could have driven up costs for consumers even more.

While this bill is not what I would have written on my own, it is certainly not what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would have written on their own, either. It locks in critical advancements ahead of the incoming administration and the partisan approach they are signaling they will take on health care, and it will make a real difference for patients and families across the country now and for years into the future.

Before I wrap up, I want to acknowledge the extraordinary time and effort put in by all of our staffs. There have been a lot of late nights and weekends for our staffs, not just this year but last year as well on this bill, and I want to take just a minute to recognize their extra effort and sacrifice.

On Senator Alexander's staff, I want to particularly acknowledge and thank his staff director, David Cleary, as well as Mary-Sumpter Lapinski and Grace Stuntz, his health and FDA policy leads, who worked very closely with my staff over many months. I also want to acknowledge and thank Margaret Coulter, Brett Meeks, Laura Pence, Melissa Pfaff, Kara Townshend, and Elizabeth Wroe for their efforts on this bill.

In the House, I want to recognize and thank the staff of Congressman Pallone, including his staff director, Jeff Carroll, along with Tiffany Guarascio, his health policy lead. I thank the staff of Chairman Upton, particularly his staff director, Gary Andres, and Paul Edattel, his health policy lead.

In addition, I thank the staff of my members on the HELP Committee, who worked so closely with my staff to make this a reality. In particular, I thank David Bonine and Joe Dunn with Senator Murphy.

I want to acknowledge the assistance of Amy Rosenbaum, Jeanne Lambrew, Kate Mevis, and Dr. Francis Collins, among many others within the administration who helped make today possible.

Finally, I want to close by thanking my staff. I can't say enough about my incredible staff, who have put their time and talents into this bill from the word ``go.'' In particular, I thank my staff director, Evan Schatz, and my health policy director, Nick Bath, for their extraordinary efforts on this legislation. Thank you.

I would also like to acknowledge the hard work of Remy Brim, Julie Tierney, Andi Fristedt, Colin Goldfinch, Melanie Rainer, Madeleine Pannell, Megan Howard, Elizabeth Wagner, Wade Ackerman, Kalah Auchincloss, Jane Bigham, Helen Hare, Eli Zupnick, John Righter, Nick McLane, and my chief of staff, Mike Spahn. I want you to know that I noticed their long hours and unwavering commitment on this legislation.

It means a lot.

I urge my colleagues to join the House when we vote on this, which voted overwhelmingly in support of this bill--392 to 26--and to join us in sending this legislation to President Obama's desk.

Thank you.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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