21st Century Cures Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Madam Chair, I want to thank Mr. Upton for his work on the 21st Century Cures Act, finally making medical breakthroughs a national priority. With this bill, we will extend the longevity and improve the lives of millions of Americans now and in the future. And in the process, we will dramatically reduce the taxpayer money we spend to treat sick Americans.

With all that in mind, I want to highlight an amendment that my thoughtful and hard-working colleague, Dr. Harris of Maryland, and I have worked on, and I urge my colleagues' support. This amendment would create within NIH a structure for a medical prize program.

The United States is currently spending $632 billion per year through just one program, Medicare, to cover health services of qualified beneficiaries. To help lower taxpayer costs as well as improve patient outcomes, this amendment will offer modest monetary rewards to those outside of government who can develop significant medical breakthroughs.

The medical prize program will encourage scientists and entrepreneurs, especially those that don't typically receive NIH grants, to develop cost-saving, life-improving cures for some of the most debilitating diseases that afflict our young and old.

With those thoughts in mind, I urge your support of the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Madam Chair, I would just add that the purpose of this amendment, obviously, well received on both sides of the aisle--perhaps there are particulars we can work on--is to catalyze more innovation among the thousands, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators around this country, really around the world.

If we can get more minds collectively thinking about medical breakthroughs, about actually curing diseases, as a preventative measure, we can save significant amounts of money in the long term. We can dramatically improve lives in the shorter term.

This is a model that opens up Federal Government funding as a reward for these innovations to our Nation's innovators, our entrepreneurs, our doers.

Right now, the NIH grant process is suboptimal for a lot of these individuals. I can speak to one individual. He used to be my neighbor, Fazni Aziz, of Bloomington, Indiana. He is a Thomas Edison-like figure, and he used to have a workshop right next to his house. He developed medical devices on his own and sold them off to larger companies.

Fazni Aziz would not receive an NIH grant. He will never apply for one. He doesn't have time to apply for one. Would he target a medical innovation on account of a prize that is offered? Indeed. We have consulted with him.

So for the people like Fazni Aziz around the world that can help Americans, we have developed this prize program.

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