Following recent overwhelming passage in the Senate, The Prescription Drug User Fee Act comes closer to becoming law after swift passage in the House of their version of the bill last night by a vote of 387-5. Both bills now move to conference for reconciliation.…

Few pieces of legislation may be as peculiar – and as important to the development of drugs and devices in this country – as the package of bills known as Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Prescription Drug User Fees Acts, known as PDUFA, or user fees for short. Born out of a frustration – amplified by the lack of therapies to respond to the AIDS epidemic – that FDA was taking too long to review drug applications, Congress enacted the first such law 20 years ago, in 1992. The law set out…