BREAKING NOW: Report: Trump White House to Drastically Slash HHS Budget
At 4:20 p.m. on Wednesday, April 16, Washington Post reporters Lena H. Sun, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Rachel Roubein, Joel Achenbach, and Lauren Weber exclusively broke a report that “The Trump administration is seeking to deeply slash budgets for federal health programs, a roughly one-third cut in discretionary spending by the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], according to a preliminary budget document obtained by The Washington Post."
According to the Post report, President Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget will send to Congress envisions paring the 2024 HHS discretionary budget of $121 billion to just $80 billion, while reorganizing a number of departments and agencies.
According to the draft document that the Post reporters have examined, they reported Wednesday evening that “The proposal would reduce the more than $47 billion budget of the NIH to $27 billion — a roughly 40 percent cut. It would consolidate NIH’s 27 institutes and centers into just eight. Some of its institutes and centers would be eliminated, including the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the National Institute of Nursing Research.” Further, “Many of NIH’s institutes would be fused. A National Institute on Body Systems, for example, would absorb three separate institutes: the institute focused on heart and lung diseases; the institute focused on diabetes, kidney and digestive disorders; and a third focused on muscle, skeletal and skin diseases.”
At the same time, the document envisions a new $20 billion agency would be created called the “Administration for a Healthy America,” which would absorb some of the areas focused on being present agencies, including primary care, environmental health, and HIV.
Another element in the envisioned budget: “The proposal would cut the CDC’s budget by about 44 percent, from $9.2 billion to about $5.2 billion, and would eliminate all of the agency’s chronic disease programs and domestic HIV work. The chronic disease programs being eliminated include work on heart disease, obesity, diabetes and smoking cessation.”
What’s more, according to the Post, “Rural programs formerly under the Health Resources and Services Administration appear to be hard-hit. The rural hospital flexibility grants, state offices of rural health, rural residency development program and at-risk rural hospitals program grants are listed as eliminations under AHA.”
And funding for the nationwide Head Start program would be completely zeroed out.
The full text of the article can be found here.
On Wednesday evening, The Hill’s Nathaniel Weixel published a follow-up report on the heels of the Post’s article. Weixel noted that, “To achieve the massive savings, the draft budget would recommend eliminating entire agencies, like the Substance Use and Mental Health Services Administration and Health Resources and Services Administration. When asked for comment, Office of Management and Budget spokesperson Rachel Cauley said, ‘no final funding decisions have been made.’”
And POLITICO’s Adam Cancryn wrote on Wednesday evening that “The OMB document shows how he might now follow through on his vow to streamline HHS’ activities and overhaul its priorities, after criticizing the department as bloated and failing in its core mission of improving Americans’ health. The overall cutback in HHS funding would be driven by zeroing out the budgets of several smaller agencies and programs, including those focused on substance abuse and services for low-income and older Americans, to shift a slimmed-down selection of their activities into a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America,” Cancryn noted, adding that “The National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would also face sharp fuMnding cuts, with the proposal slashing funding for both public health agencies by more than 40 percent.”
Cancryn noted that, among other impacts, “Public health initiatives aimed at HIV/AIDS prevention would no longer exist. Major parts of the National Institutes of Health would be abolished. The Food and Drug Administration would cease routine inspections at food facilities. And funding for many of the administration’s priorities are on the chopping block, including federal programs focused on autism, chronic disease, drug abuse and mental health.”
Also on Wednesday evening, CNN’s Sarah Owermohle and Meg Tirrell wrote that, “While the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the National Institute on Aging would be preserved. Institutes researching childhood illnesses, mental health, chronic disease, disabilities and substance abuse would be shuffled into five new entities: the National Institute on Body Systems, National Institute on Neuroscience and Brain Research, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the National Institute of Disability Related Research and National Institute of Behavioral Health.”
Further, Owermohle and Tirrell wrote, “The budget also assumes that the administration’s earlier attempt to cap indirect payments to universities at 15 percent, blocked by a court, would be in effect. Many of these payments have traditionally helped fund medical research. While NIH has historically enjoyed bipartisan support for funding increases, there have been growing calls among GOP lawmakers for reform. House Republican leaders proposed last year to consolidate the institutes into 15 entities but also suggested a slight budget increase in that plan. The proposal would also establish a salary cap for employees hired under Title 42, a National Institutes of Health provision that gives the agency more leeway to hire experts into senior roles. Many top officials, including the now-retired National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease director Anthony Fauci, are hired as Title 42 employees.”
This is a developing story. Healthcare Innovation will update readers as new developments emerge.
