House of Representatives Passes Continuing Resolution to Sustain Funding for Health Care Agencies and Initiatives
The U.S. House of Representatives voted on December 8, 2010 on approving a continuing resolution that wraps all the major spending bills Congress has yet to pass into one single bill. The $1.09 trillion dollar bill sustained 2010 funding levels for federal agencies into FY2011, with most funds falling short of the President's budget request.
Funding for the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were sustained, but not expanded, under the House's omnibus spending bill, while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was one of the few agencies to get a funding increase in line with the agency's growth needs.
The NIH only received a 3.2 percent increase from 2010 funding levels, to $3.1 billion dollars in FY2011. The agency may spend up to $25 million of that money on the Cures Acceleration Network, a drug-development program encouraged by President Obama's health care reform legislation. The funding would be used to coordinate initiatives between the NIH and drug manufacturers that want to use NIH-financed research to develop new drug therapies.
The FDA will be funded at $3.7 billion dollars, a $158 million dollar increase in appropriated funding over the agency's 2010 funding. That represents a 7 pecent increase over 2010 funding levels, just enough to cover the traditional 5-6 percent funding growth the FDA would need to sustain program and staff levels.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), chairwoman of the FDA Appropriations Subcommittee, said the FDA ought to be exempt from the overall spending restraint on other agencies because of its growing and complex responsibilities, coupled with years of under-funding. This funding figure includes both existing user fees, plus Congressional appropriations, but it does not include potential use fees like a generic drug use fee program.
HHS received $74 billion dollars for FY2011, with some of that funding to go to boosting the agency's medical countermeasures program. The countermeasures program received $170 million dollars, supporting research related to defenses against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear agents. These funds are not specifically tied to FY2011, and thus do not have to be spent within that 12-month timeframe.
Also, an additional $170 million in funding was directed to be spent on reprocessing Medicare claims filed by physicians from last spring. These claims were refiled by physicians after Congress was late in amending scheduled Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) cuts from reducing physician compensation.
