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FDA’s coffers once-again came up empty in the updated 21st Century Cures draft bill released Wednesday, but Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton pledged that more funding will be added — and that a complete pay-for will be attached — when the full committee considers the bill next week. The draft released ahead of a Health subcommittee markup Thursday includes $10 billion in mandatory spending for the NIH and a new six-month rare disease exclusivity for drug companies as well as other incentives, including a boost in Medicare pay for new antibiotics used in hospitals. (Karlin and Norma, 5/13)

Why is the nation's capital suddenly obsessed with biomedical innovation? And why is the fruit of that obsession, the proposed 21st Century Cures Act, moving like a freight train through the usually deadlocked congressional process .... Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen called the NIH funding a horse trade “providing perks to the pharmaceutical and medical device industries to approve medications and devices faster based on weaker evidence.” Observers say nearly every sector of the healthcare industry—even those that seem only tangentially related to the subject of the bipartisan legislation—has gotten involved in lobbying the bill. (Tahir, 5/12)

Two bills were introduced in Congress on Wednesday to bolster the authority of the U.S. Department of Agriculture following the agency's slow response to successive salmonella outbreaks. One bill, introduced by Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York in the U.S. Senate, would give the USDA mandatory recall authority. The other bill, introduced in the U.S. House by Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., would ban antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria and also force a recall of products contaminated with pathogens that cause serious illness. (Terry, 5/13)