MassBio CEO & President Kendalle Burlin O’Connell originally posted this update to LinkedIn:
It’s now December, and Congress is working to accomplish a few important tasks before the calendar turns to the New Year. FY26 appropriations, ACA subsidies and tax credits, and the annual NDAA are all on the agenda. We’ve also seen the bipartisan INVEST Act introduced, and the House could vote on it as early as next week. Here’s our full update:
EOY To-Do List for Congress: On Congress’s year-end to-do list, FY26 appropriations and the looming December 31 expiration of enhanced ACA subsidies are two of the biggest moving pieces for health and life sciences. In the Senate, Majority Leader Thune is pressing to advance a multi-bill appropriations package. On the coverage side, the clock is ticking on ACA premium tax credits: the administration briefly floated the idea of a tailored two-year extension before backing away under pressure from House Republicans. Thune is still expected to honor his deal with Democrats by holding a Senate vote on subsidies in the coming days. The subsidies were a key issue discussed in this week’s Senate HELP Committee hearing on “Making Health Care Affordable Again”. Chair Cassidy (R-LA) shared in his remarks a desire to “roll up our sleeves and seek out a true middle ground…that includes recognizing that increased support for some patients will continue in some manner. But it also includes shifting dollars away from the current structure of the ePTCs and repurposing the dollars for pre-funded HSAs.”
NDAA Outlook: NDAA conferees are expected to release a compromise NDAA text soon, and a key question for life sciences companies is whether the revised “BIOSECURE 2.0” language initially adopted in the Senate NDAA will survive into the final bill. There is strong, bipartisan momentum behind tightening federal reliance on Chinese biotech suppliers, so we expect some version of BIOSECURE-style contracting and grant restrictions as more likely than not.
INVEST Act Introduced: The House is preparing to vote as early as next week on the Incentivizing New Ventures and Economic Strength Through Capital Formation (INVEST) Act, a package of more than 20 bipartisan capital-formation bills that cleared the Financial Services Committee and are now being bundled for floor consideration. If passed, the bill will expand access to private capital (by updating venture fund rules, raising private-fund thresholds, clarifying demo days, and boosting crowdfunding), reduce regulatory barriers for IPOs (by extending JOBS Act-style on-ramps like confidential filings and streamlined disclosure for emerging growth companies), and broaden investment and ownership opportunities for individuals. MassBio supports INVEST because it would strengthen the flow of capital to emerging biotechs at a time when early-stage innovators continue to face a challenging fundraising environment.
US/UK Trade Deal: The U.S. and U.K. announced a deal earlier this week on pharmaceutical pricing that would avoid tariffs on drug exports in exchange for the U.K. agreeing to spend more on certain medicines. Under the deal, the U.K. commits to reverse a decade-long decline in NHS spending on innovative medicines and to increase the net price it pays for new drugs by 25%. In return, the U.S. will exempt U.K.-origin pharmaceuticals, ingredients, and medical technology from Section 232 tariffs for the duration of President Trump’s term. This is another marker that U.S. trade policy is now explicitly linking tariff relief to foreign governments paying more for innovative drugs.
Funding Shift at NIH: A New York Times analysis of Trump-era science cuts spotlights NIH’s shift toward funding a greater share of grants as multi-year, lump-sum awards. The approach sounds pro-stability, but in practice, it sharply reduces the number of new grants that can be awarded each year. For industry, this means a narrower upstream pipeline of NIH-supported basic and translational science, possibly leading to more lab closures and disrupted clinical trials, and greater pressure on biopharma and investors to back earlier-stage, higher-risk research themselves. Over the long term, a system that offers stability for a smaller set of labs while pushing many others out of the funding ecosystem risks shrinking the pipeline, raising real concerns about U.S. biomedical competitiveness.
New NSCEB Report: Last week, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) released a new report warning that U.S. scientific leadership is eroding as competitors like China press ahead and urging policymakers to rethink how we fund and organize research. In the report, NSCEB recommends that the federal government become a better partner in science and technology, enabling autonomous, AI-driven scientific discovery, and “unlocking science across America” by strengthening state and regional research investments and broadening participation in the R&D enterprise nationwide.