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Although his policy is at the center of concern and he has lobbied hard against the Affordable Care Act, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch has also played a key role in the adoption of several historical health laws with bipartisan support.
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Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah who retires after 42 years in the Senate while the new generation is sworn in, leaves a long list of achievements in the health sector. Some were less controversial than others.
Hatch played a key role in the development of the 1983 Orphan Medicines Act to promote the development of drugs for rare diseases and the 1984 Organ Transplant Act, which contributed to the creation of a national registry of transplants. And in 1995, when many people with AIDS still felt marginalized by society and elected leaders, he testified before the Senate about re-authorizing funding for his Ryan White CARE Act to treat uninsured people. HIV-positive.
"AIDS is not a favorite," Hatch told other senators. "It affects the rich and the poor, adults and children, men and women, rural communities and inner cities, we know a lot, but the fear remains."
Hatch, now 84, has co-sponsored a number of bills with Democrats over the years. , often with the late Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. The two men were sometimes referred to as "strange couple" because of their politically inadequate friendship.
In 1997, the two men proposed a new safety net for children: the Children's Health Insurance Program.
The country has made tremendous progress, and we should all be proud of that – and Senator Hatch too, "said Joan Alker, Executive Director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University. [19659006] Before the adoption of CHIP, the number of In America, the number of uninsured children was about 10 million.Today, it is less than half. 19659006] Hatch's influence on health care in the United States is partly explained by the number of bills that he sponsored or co-sponsored – more than any other living senator – and because he was chairman of several powerful Senate committees.
"The story was on his side because the Republicans were at the helm," says Dr. David Sundwall, professor emeritus in Public Health at the University of Toronto. 39, University of Utah and Director of Hatch Health in the 1980s.
Q When Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1981, the Senate became controlled by Republicans for the first time in decades. Hatch has been named chair of the health, education, labor and pensions committee, which oversees the Food and Drug Administration, disease control and prevention centers, and the National Institutes of Health.
"He was practically catapulted into that role of president," Sundwall said. "It is amazing that he chaired a coordinating committee during his first term in the Senate."
In 2011, Hatch was also appointed to the very influential Senate Finance Committee, where he later became president. There, he helped oversee the national Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP health programs.
Hatch's growing influence in Congress did not go unnoticed by health lobbyists. According to the monitoring organization Center for Responsive Politics, over the last 25 years funding political campaigns Hatch ranks third among Congress members for contributions from the pharmaceutical and health sector. (This is behind the Democratic senators who ran for senior positions – President Barack Obama and the presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.)
"It's clear that he was there." 39, PhRMA man on the hill, "says Dr. Jeremy Greene, referring to a professional group companies. Green is a professor of medical history at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Although Hatch worked to bring down drug prices, the senator noted a mixed record in regulating drug companies.
For example, an important element of Hatch's Legislative Legacy is the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act, drafted with the representative of the time. Henry Waxman, an influential California Democrat. While the law encouraged the development of cheaper generic drugs, it also rewarded brand-name drug companies by extending their patents to valuable drugs.
The law actually boosted sales of cheaper generic drugs, says Greene. But drug manufacturers quickly learned to exploit the weaknesses of the law.
"Brand-name drug companies have begun to create more and more multiple patents around their drugs," said Greene, in an effort to preserve their monopolies after the initial patent expires.
Other brand-name drug companies have preserved their monopolies by paying generic drug companies to avoid competition.
"These late payment contracts were indeed based on part of the Hatch-Waxman Act," said Greene.
Hatch has also worked closely with the dietary supplement industry. His industry, worth several billion dollars and specializing in vitamins, minerals, herbs and other "natural" health products, is concentrated in his home state, Utah. In the early 1990s, there was disagreement over whether supplements should be regulated as foods or more strictly as drugs.
"There really was no room for these natural health products," said Loren Israelsen, president of the United Natural Products Alliance. Hatch staff member in the late 1970s.
In 1994, Hatch sponsored the Health and Education Act for Dietary Supplements, known as DSHEA.
"It was necessary to have a champion who would say," All right, if we need to change the law, what does it look like, "and" … " Let's go there, "says Israelsen.
Some legislators and consumer groups wanted vitamins and other supplements to go through a strict approval process, similar to the Food Test. and Drug Administration requires medication. But DSHEA has limited the FDA, believing that supplements should not meet the same standards of safety and effectiveness as prescription drugs.
This legislative impediment to regulation has led to recurring questions about whether dietary supplements really work and how they interact.
DSHEA was co-sponsored by Democrat Tom Harkin, then Senator from Iowa.
This type of bipartisanship has largely defined Hatch's career, but has become less evident in recent years. He was strongly opposed to the Affordable Care Act and, in 2018, called health law supporters among the "stupidest and stupidest people" he'd ever met. (Hatch later called this remark "poorly worded joke".)
In his farewell address to the Senate in December, Hatch lamented the polarization that overwhelmed Congress.
"Gridlock is the new standard". I said. "Like the humidity here, partisanship permeates everything we do."
This story is part of a reporting partnership comprising KUER, NPR and of Kaiser Health News .
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