By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House wants to reduce U.S. health spending by more than a quarter next year, with the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention facing the brunt of billions of dollars in cuts.
President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday proposed a $163 billion cut to the federal budget that would sharply reduce spending in areas including health, education, and housing next year, while increasing outlays for defense and border security.
The proposed budget requests $93.8 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services – a cut of $33.3 billion, or 26.2% – from this year’s budget of $127 billion.
It includes a cut of $18 billion, or 40% of the money allocated to the NIH, leaving it with $27 billion. The Trump administration wants to cut funding altogether for four of the agency’s 27 institutes and centers while consolidating others into five new ones.
A total of almost $1 billion would be eliminated for the National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities, Fogarty International Center, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, and National Institute of Nursing Research.
Some of the NIH’s remaining institutes and centers would be consolidated under five new ones: the National Institute on Body Systems Research, National Institute on Neuroscience and Brain Research, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institute of Disability Related Research, and National Institute on Behavioral Health.
Cutting NIH funding threatens research into cures for serious diseases, puts lives at risk, and delays diagnoses, treatments and cures, said George Vradenburg, chairman of UsAgainstAlzheimer, patient advocacy group.
‘WHOLESALE GUTTING’
The proposal almost halves the CDC budget by almost $3.6 billion, leaving it with a $4 billion budget. It proposes merging various programs tackling infectious diseases, opioids, sexually transmitted infections and other areas into one grant program funded at $300 million
It calls for eliminating programs it described as “duplicative” or “simply unnecessary” like the National Center for Chronic Diseases Prevention and Health Promotion, National Center for Environmental Health, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Global Health Center, Public Health Preparedness and Response, and Preventive Health and Human Services Block Grant.
The administration did not propose cuts at the Food and Drug Administration. It proposed $674 million in cuts at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services but said benefits would not be affected.
The cuts follow a plan announced in March by Secretary for Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seeking to reshape federal public health agencies by cutting 10,000 employees and centralizing some functions of the FDA, CDC and others under his purview. The job cuts include 3,500 at the FDA, 2,400 at the CDC, and 1,200 at the NIH.
“This isn’t a reorganization; it’s a wholesale gutting of programs that save lives and reduce healthcare costs for all of us. Eliminating these efforts would reverse decades of progress,” former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said of the proposed budget.
“The bottom line: this proposal would make Americans sicker and poorer. It would cost lives and money.”
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Additional Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Michele Gershberg and David Gregorio and Richard Chang)
