Ted Agres, MBA

Congress and the Bush Administration are wrangling over how to strengthen the drug safety oversight activities at the FDA in the wake of the recent controversies over cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors and pediatric antidepressants. The White House intends to create an independent Drug Safety Oversight Board (DSB) within the FDA. Several key senators like the idea but insist that the DSB be separate from the FDA to keep it from being "under the thumb" of that agency.

Neurologists and other physicians can expect Medicare reimbursements, medical liability reform, and prescription drug issues to be revisited this year as President Bush and Republican leaders attempt to leverage the fall election gains in the House and Senate. But enacting key measures is far from certain. Despite titular control of 55 seats in the Senate, Republicans are still shy of the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Passing such bills “is not going to be a slam-dunk,” said Jacque J. Sokolov, senior partner of Sokolov, Sokolov, Burgess, a health care consultancy in Scottsdale, Ariz. “But the likelihood of it happening is greater in a Bush- Republican Congress environment than it would have been in a Kerry environment.”