Tory spokesman Earl Howe also worried the bill might be deficient but said there was a "duty" to support its aims.
Health minister Earl Howe emphasised that the bill's specific requirement for the health secretary to have regard to promoting research was the first of its kind, but promised to "undertake closer consideration" of how the health secretary's duties on research are defined.
But Health Minister Earl Howe told peers that the bill had been subject to 25 full days of detailed analysis in the House of Lords - scrutiny that was "without recent precedent".
But during a sixth day of report stage debate on the Health and Social Care Bill on 8 March 2012, Health Minister Earl Howe moved amendments aimed at allaying peers' concerns.
Earl Howe, the junior health minister piloting the bill in the Lords, attempted to negotiate a programme for consideration of the bill with Lord Owen - who, as a crossbencher, was in no position to deliver any kind of agreement.
BBC: Parliamentary warfare breaks out in Lords over NHS bill
Agreeing to the amendment during the bill's fifth day of report stage debate on 6 March 2012, Lord Howe told peers that to prescribe reviews every seven years may place "too great an emphasis on competition in the NHS".
Lord Howe said existing legislation allied to changes proposed in the Health and Social Care Bill would produce "demonstrable improvements in outcomes for disabled people" and Lord Rix agreed to withdraw his amendments.
BBC: Minister defends health bill's impact on disabled people
Health Minister Earl Howe told peers the government was happy to remove passages from the Health and Social Care Bill that would have forced the Competition Commission to conduct reviews of the development of competition in the health service.
Tory former chancellor and foreign secretary Lord Howe of Aberavon also said he was "certainly not persuaded of the case being made for the bill as it stands".
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