Week ahead: Docs hope to get their ‘fix’ in time for Christmas

{mosads}Congressional appropriators, meanwhile, still have to figure out how to keep the government open past the end of next week. The House health spending bill in particular is fraught with anti-abortion riders and cuts to the healthcare reform law. Democrats oppose those provisions, and conservative Republicans want deeper cuts, leaving final passage in the House uncertain.

With so many issues left to iron out, lawmakers will have their hands full, leaving little time for other congressional activity.

One exception is a Ways and Means Trade subcommittee hearing on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, set for Wednesday.

The proposed trade deal is of special interest to the pharmaceutical industry because it would immediately eliminate tariffs on medicines and impose stronger patent protections.

Eight countries are engaged in the negotiations, along with the United States: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

Off Capitol Hill, the board that advises Congress on Medicare payments meets Thursday and Friday. Payments for hospitals, dialysis, surgical centers, skilled nursing facilities, home health and medications for low-income seniors are on Thursday’s agenda; hospice, inpatient rehabilitation and long-term-care hospital services are on Friday’s.

And the Food and Drug Administration is holding a public meeting Friday on user fees to fund the review of applications for generic biologic drugs, also known as biosimilars. The meeting will be on the FDA’s White Oak Campus in Silver Spring, Md.