President Releases Federal Budget Proposal - Texas Journal of Chiropractic

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President Releases Federal Budget Proposal

Published 02/15/2012 - 6:23 a.m. CDT

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Medpagetoday.com REPORTS HERE that "President Obama's proposed 2013 budget includes a slight increase for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) …. A large chunk of the proposed $76.4 billion budget for the department, announced on Monday, would go directly toward implementing the controversial Affordable Care Act (ACA), since many of its provisions are slated to go into effect the following year."

Highlights of the budget include:

CMS

"The $4.8 billion earmarked for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is a $1 billion bump from what Congress approved last year. The bulk of the new CMS money ($860 million) will go toward setting up the ACA-mandated state insurance exchanges, a CMS official said during a Monday afternoon press briefing. The rest of the additional money will pay for increasing enrollment in Medicare."

FDA

"Of the FDA's proposed $4.5 billion budget, nearly half that amount -- $2 billion -- comes from anticipated user fees from the pharmaceutical, device, food, and cosmetics industries. The remaining $2.5 billion from the federal government is on par with what was enacted by Congress for fiscal 2012."

"The FDA budget also includes $253 million to bolster FDA's efforts to improve safety in the food supply, as well as about $5 million to improve the safety of medical products imported from foreign countries such as China."

NIH

"Funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) remained flat at $31 billion. … The budget request will enable NIH to support 9,415 new and competing research project grants, an 8% increase over the number of grants the agency is expected to award in fiscal 2012…."

CDC

"The 2013 budget would allocate about $5 billion for the CDC, a 12% decrease from last year's funding."

Other Agencies

"In addition to the funds for CMS, FDA, NIH, and CDC, the budget would:

Provide $3.1 billion for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a slight decrease over last year.

Invest $3.3 billion for discretionary HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment across departments at HHS.

Provide the ACA's Health Center Program with $7.3 billion over the 2013-2015 time period, which will help fund centers that provide primary care in underserved communities. The money would pay for the opening of 25 new health centers across the country during 2013.

Include $547 million to develop 'next generation medical countermeasures against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats.'"

"In terms of deficit reduction, the plan proposes slashing $3 trillion over 10 years from all areas of the federal budget. That includes $360 billion in Medicare and other entitlement cuts."

"However, that figure assumes that a 28% cut in Medicare payments to doctors will go into effect at the end of February. Under a reimbursement formula called the sustainable growth rate (SGR), doctors are scheduled to face that cut in a few weeks, but Congress has always voted to avert the cut at the last minute."

"The budget document also calls for a number of other cost-cutting measures, including prohibiting "pay for delay" agreements between brand-name drug companies and generic companies; asking wealthier seniors to pay more for Medicare; and paying hospitals less for "bad debts" that accumulate when seniors don't pay their copays or hospital bills."

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