Jeb Bush releases healthcare, innovation plan

Jeb Bush released a healthcare plan Tuesday that seeks to replace the Affordable Care Act with refundable tax credits for catastrophic insurance plans and block grants to states to subsidize insurance for low income individuals. The plan aims to promote innovation by reforming and increasing funding for FDA and NIH. Bush said he would work with state governments to move 17 million Americans who are "entangled in Obamacare" to state-regulated and subsidized insurance plans.

Bush said he would "modernize the Food and Drug Administration's regulatory morass," and attributed the time and cost required to develop new drugs to FDA's "regulatory mess." Bush outlined his goals for FDA reform, but did not provide details on how they could be accomplished. He vowed to "modernize the tools that the FDA uses to make scientific decisions, including biomarkers, patient-reported clinical outcomes and real-world data; accelerate clinical trials by utilizing patient data as it accumulates, rather than rigid predetermined timelines, to continuously modify and improve studies; allow manufacturers to share truthful, non-misleading scientific information and peer-reviewed clinical data with physicians and patients; and ensure that the FDA is adequately resourced to make timely approvals of safe and effective innovator and generic drugs." ...