House Appropriations Advances First Labor-HHS Funding Bill in Six Years
In a 30-21 vote following a nearly seven hour markup, appropriators advanced a $153 billion bill last Wednesday funding the departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Education and Labor for the next fiscal year. This marks the first time in six years the full committee has advanced a funding measure for these departments, which would receive $3.7 billion less than current funding levels and $14.6 billion less than President Obama’s request for fiscal 2016. However, the bill provides a total $31.2 billion for NIH; $1.1 billion above the FY 2015 enacted level and $100 million above the President’s budget request. Additional HHS funding included 7 billion for CDC, up $140 million from FY 2015.
Notable cuts in the measure included:
- $7 billion in funding for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation
- $100 million from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)
The bill would also eliminate funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a $440 million unit that supports research designed to identify best clinical practices that improve patient quality and safety. Supporters of this measure have asserted that eliminating AHRQ would cut costs and allow for limited funds to go to areas with seemingly more impact, like the National Institutes of Health, (set to receive a 1.1billion increase). A motion by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) to restore the funding failed by a voice vote.
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Additional items of items in the report language relevant to ASPET members can be found in a summary document here. (Summary document is attached).
Senate Appropriators Adopt LHHS Bill
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the LHHS bill by a vote of 16-14 with all democrats opposed. NIH received $32 billion, an increase of $2 billion (5.6 percent) above FY 2015 (and equal to FASEB’s recommendation, which ASPET supported). The Senate level for NIH is $1 billion more than the level provided by the House Appropriations Committee. LHHS Subcommittee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-MO) noted that the $2 billion increase fort NIH marked the largest since the doubling effort ended in 2003. The committee adopted a “Manager’s Package” making additional changes to the bill text, a summary of which can be found here.
The proposed funding will support the following NIH initiatives:
- $200 million for Precision Medicine
- $350 million increase for the National Institute on Aging, the lead Institute researching Alzheimer’s disease
- $135 million, an increase of $70 million, for the BRAIN Initiative to map the human brain
- $461 million, an increase of $100 million, to Combat Antibiotic Resistance
- $300 million, an increase of $26.7 million, for the Institutional Development Award
There are several items of interest in the report language, including a significant expansion of data to be collected in the NIH existing database on research spending by disease and condition and a provision requiring each Institute and Center (I/C) Director to adopt a policy for reviewing and approving every grant that is funded. The report also features statements on conflict of interest, research prioritization, reproducibility, young researchers, protection of human subjects and non-human primate research, as well as language criticizing NIH for requesting new initiatives each year without asking for proper long term funding to support them. Additional language is included expressing support for the Maximizing Investigators Research Award (MIRA) and Capstone grant proposal. Finally, the Committee requested that the NIH FY 2017 budget justification provide updates on dozens of initiatives and projects currently underway at the agency.
The report language introduction notes that “the Committee recommendation reflects the challenges inherent in achieving deficit reduction solely through reductions in discretionary spending.” It also notes that funding for biomedical research was a priority in the bill, including support for Alzheimer’s research and the precision medicine initiative in the FY 2016 NIH budget request.
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