Speeding up generic drugs
What they say
In the October 8 WOOD TV8 debate, Rogers said that in Congress he pushed to speed up generic drugs, and that drug companies are not happy about it.
What the record shows ·
No bill he sponsored has "generic" in its title. In 2007 he was an original cosponsor of the House's FDA bill (H.R. 2900) and voted for it and for the final bill, H.R. 3580 (Roll Calls 617 and 885). That law, Public Law 110-85, bars a drug's maker from using its required safety restrictions to block or delay a generic, and limits how far petitions can delay a generic's approval. He was an original cosponsor of the Pathway for Biosimilars Act in 2008 and 2009 (H.R. 5629 and H.R. 1548), which would have set up a way to approve copies of biologic drugs, but not until 12 years after the original was licensed; neither left committee. He voted for the 2003 Medicare law (Roll Call 669), whose title XI, "Access to Affordable Pharmaceuticals", changed the rules for generic drug applications. In 2012 he voted for the House's FDA bill (H.R. 5651, Roll Call 294), which set fees on generic drug applications, including a one-time fee on the backlog, to pay for the FDA's generic drug work; those fees became law that year in the final bill, S. 3187 (Public Law 112-144). A biosimilar approval route with the same 12-year wait became law in 2010 in the Affordable Care Act, which he voted against (Roll Call 165).
Limit: "Pushed" is his word. The record shows his cosponsorships and votes, not what he did behind the scenes, and each of these laws did much more than generic drugs.