Can Left, Right Unite on User Fees?

While drug safety dominates the news, the big battle brewing over at the Food and Drug Administration is next year's reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which accounts for nearly half the funds that flow into the agency. Consumer groups oppose user fees because it makes the agency beholden to the very firms it regulates for staff salaries.

The answer, of course, is get Congress to properly fund the agency. If the mission of the FDA is to protect the health and safety of the American people, then the American people -- all of them -- should fund the agency, not predominantly the drug and device manufacturers.

That's a bit of background for today's news, which came in an interesting letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, (subscription required). Henry Miller, an associate at the ultra-conservative Hoover Institution and a former FDA employee, complains that industry fees are unfair! Here's what he had to say:

These kinds of user fees are, after all, nothing more than a discriminatory tax on a single industrial sector. You could at least have raised the possibility of appropriated funds substituting for user fees when Congress takes up the reauthorization of PDUFA next year.

This could make for some interesting coalition building next year.