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ASRM BULLETIN
Volume 10, Number 3
February 6, 2008
President’s Budget For Fiscal Year 2009 Released; Many Cuts, A Few Increases For Health-Related Programs
Monday, the White House released the President’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2009. Many programs were funded at FY08 levels; many others were subjected to decreases. The National Center for Health Statistics and the Food and Drug Administration saw some of the uncommon increases.
This is the opening move of a process that promises to be drawn out for as the Democratically-controlled Congress negotiates and comes back with its own proposal.
Here are some details on programs of interest:
National Institutes of Health
For NIH, the budget requests $29.230 billion in discretionary budget authority through the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations; this is equal to the FY 2008 appropriation.
The budget also assumes $78 million though the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee for the transfer from the Superfund to the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), $150 million in mandatory appropriations for type I diabetes, and $8 million in evaluation funds for the National Library of Medicine (NLM), for a program level of $29.465 billion, the same as in FY 2008.
NIH estimates that in FY2009, it will support 38,257 research project grants, including 9,757 new and competing awards - approximately the same levels as FY 2008.
National Center for Health Statistics
NCHS was granted an increase of $11.1 million, for a total program request of $124.7 million. This represents an increase over FY 2008 appropriations in which NCHS received $113.6 million in program money which was an increase of almost $6.5 million over the actual FY 2007 program funding level of $107.1 million.
Food and Drug Administration
FDA’s budget would increase to $2.4 billion under the President’s plan, from $2.27 billion in FY2008. $389.5 million would be committed to drug safety activities, an increase of $36.1 million over 2008.
Health Resources and Services Administration
The request for HRSA is $5.9 billion, a decrease of $1 billion from the FY 2008 enacted level. The biggest cuts include a proposed reduction of $250 million from health professions, bringing that area down to $66 million and eliminating funding for all Title VII health professions programs and Advanced Education Nursing. Funding would be eliminated for children's hospitals graduate medical education and public health buildings.
Family Planning
The Title X funding request remains level with the FY08 appropriation, at $300 million.
However, the President’s budget proposal would cut approximately $3.3 billion over five years for family planning services under Medicaid. According to his plan, the federal government would align the match rates with a state's regular medical assistance percentage rather than the current 90% federal match rate for family planning services.
And, despite the proven ineffectiveness of abstinence education, the President has requested a$28 million increase for Community-Based Abstinence Programs, bring that item up to $141 million.
Medicaid and Medicare
The President’s proposed budget would cut almost $200 billion from Medicare and Medicaid over the next five years. According to Representative John Dingell, quoted in a publication of the Bureau of National Affairs, the Medicaid cuts would "drastically limit the ability of already cash-strapped states to maintain current levels of health insurance coverage, potentially forcing them to increase cost sharing, cut provider payments and/or reduce benefits. The proposed Medicaid cuts include $14.6 billion in cuts as a result of regulatory actions taken by this administration to rewrite program rules that have been unchanged by Congress in more than a decade."
The Health and Human Services FY 2009 Budget in Brief may be viewed at http://www.hhs.gov/budget/09budget/2009BudgetInBrief.pdf
The ASRM Bulletin is published by ASRM's Office of Public Affairs to inform Society members of important recent developments. Republication or any other use of the contents of the Bulletin without permission is prohibited. To request permission to quote or excerpt material from the Bulletin, contact Sean Tipton at
stipton@asrm-dc.org.
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