... this being a follow up to the episode two years before about orphan diseases and drugs - that being diseases so rare that there is no profit in producing drugs for their treatment, even if an effective drug is known to exist.
There is one particular disease mentioned - myoclonus - which does exist, but is not as serious as shown. It causes jerks and tremors as shown in the episode, but does not appear to be progressive to the extent indicated. I could find no such drug as "L5-HTP", so I'll chalk all of this up to dramatic license.
So apparently, in this episode, in the absence of an orphan drug law, the one treatment for myoclonus, L5-HTP, has stopped being manufactured. As a result a 21-year-old becomes so bedridden that his doctors say he can no longer live at home and must move to a nursing home. The idea of spending the next 60 years being warehoused with people in their 80s drives the young man to suicide. Quincy becomes aware that the orphan drug bill has never been passed as a result of the young man's suicide. He then rejoins a campaign to finally get the bill passed. To fill up the running time there is the sympathetic story of a young mother who also has myoclonus who will also eventually become bedridden and who currently cannot safely even hold her own baby.
The hold up on the bill is one senator, and although the party is not mentioned, it is insinuated. There actually was an orphan drug bill passed in 1983, and although these sermonizing episodes of Quincy could get tiresome, this was one such episode that was well done.