President Obama Releases FY 2011 Budget Proposal
During his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama outlined some of his Administration’s recommendations regarding the fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget. He recommended a three year partial freeze on discretionary spending with the exception of defense, homeland security, intelligence, foreign aid and veterans’ programs. However, entitlement programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid are not affected by this freeze.
On Monday, February 1, the President released his FY 2011 budget proposal, which affects the budgets for all federal agencies beginning October 1, 2010 through September 30 2011. The presidential budget is only a request to Congress; Congress is not required to adopt, or even consider, the President’s recommendations.
Highlights of the Budget Proposal Impacting Physicians
- Office of the National Coordinator / Health Information Technology (HIT) — $100 Million: By allocating additional monies to HIT, the Administration hopes that this funding, combined with the American Recovery and Reinvestments Act Federal grant and incentive program, will encourage providers to adopt and use HIT systems, and that quality of care will improve while reducing the cost of health care
- Comparative Effectiveness Research — $286 Million: The President proposed to allocate $286 million to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) for comparative effectiveness research. This money is in addition to the $300 million already allocated to AHRQ by the ARRA
- National Institutes of Health —$32.089 Billion: The budget proposal requests $32.089 billion for the National Institutes of Health, a three percent increased compared to 2010. According the summary, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute will receive $3.188 billion, a five percent increase from 2010
- Food and Drug Administration — $4.0 Billion: The budget increases the FDA budget by $146 million compared to FY 2010, a 6 percent increase. The budget includes increases to bring safer, more effective, and lower cost generic drugs and generic biologics to market,and expand postmarket and safety surveillance of medical products
- Medicare Physician Payment — $371 Billion (over 10 years): The President includes in his budget an additional adjustment totaling $371 billion over ten years (FY 2011–FY 2020) to fix the Medicare physician payment formula
- Bipartisan Fiscal Commission: The budget proposal includes the creation of a fiscal bipartisan commission charged with identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run. The Commission will examine policies to meaningfully improve the long‐run fiscal outlook, including changes to address the growth of entitlement spending. This means that Medicare and Medicaid programs will be impacted by the Commissions’ recommendations
- New Demonstration Projects for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services: The budget includes new Medicare and Medicaid demonstration projects that evaluate reforms to provide higher quality care at lower costs, improve beneficiary education and understanding of benefits offered, and better align provider payments with costs and outcomes
Congressional Budget committees will now meet week to examine the President’s proposal and craft a new budget resolution that sets the amounts available to Congressional appropriators. (Congressional appropriators are Members of Congress serving on the “Appropriation Committees” which allocates the monies available to the various federal programs.)
