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President Obama signed a $6.3 billion bill to fund drug treatment, a precision medicine initiative and Vice President Biden's signature effort to "end cancer as we know it." In an emotional bill signing ceremony — likely the last one of this presidency — Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act in a White House auditorium. The signing brought full circle Obama's State of the Union challenge to Congress to "surprise the cynics" by tackling some of the biggest health priorities facing the country. (Korte, 12/13)

On a "bittersweet day" that brought back memories of loved ones lost, President Barack Obama signed into law legislation that makes new investments in cancer research and battling drug abuse. Obama signed the bill Tuesday at a ceremony on the White House campus flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and key lawmakers from both parties. ... The 21st Century Cures Act invests $1.8 billion for a cancer research "moonshot" that is strongly supported by Biden. The vice president's son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015. (Freking, 12/13)

President Obama on Tuesday signed a sweeping medical cures bill into law, capping more than a year of bipartisan negotiations. The 21st Century Cures Act seeks to speed up the approval of new drugs and invests new money in medical research. The measure grew to include a slew of bipartisan priorities, including $1 billion over two years to fight the epidemic of opioid addiction and $1.8 billion for Vice President Biden’s cancer “moonshot” initiative. A long-awaited mental health bill was also included in the package. (Sullivan, 12/13)

President Barack Obama on Tuesday signed into law a package of biomedical innovation bills that also includes legislation intended to improve U.S. mental health care, funding for several of the administration’s key health initiatives and money to help states combat the opioid epidemic. The bill, known as 21st Century Cures (HR 34), will direct $4.8 billion in funding to the National Institutes of Health over 10 years, specifically for programs including Obama’s cancer moonshot initiative. It also would direct $500 million over nine years to the Food and Drug Administration and $1 billion to states over two years to help fight prescription drug abuse. Appropriators would still have to sign off on the use of that funding in future years. (Williams, 12/13)

Nestled within the 994 pages of the 21st Century Cures Act that President Barack Obama signed into law on Tuesday is an opportunity for hospitals to change the way they are judged when patients are unnecessarily readmitted. The law requires Medicare to account for patient backgrounds when it calculates reductions in its payments to hospitals under the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program. Until the passage of the Cures Act, originally meant for biomedical innovation but turned into a smorgasbord of healthcare policies, thorny questions about adjusting for patient demographics had been avoided. Hospitals have been at fault if, within 30 days after discharge, patients return to the hospital for the same reason they were originally admitted.  (Whitman and Johnson, 12/13)