President’s Budget Makes Clear Health Care is Still a Priority

By guest blogger Melissa James, associate director, policy analysis

For weeks we at N.A.C.H. have been anticipating President Obama’s FY 2011 budget, which was released Monday.

Actually, what we call the President’s budget is more like a detailed spending proposal for Congress. Unlike in many states, the President’s budget has no authoritative force; constitutionally, it is the duty of Congress to introduce and pass spending bills for the President’s signature. However, the release of the President’s budget represents a sort of kick-off of the appropriations process that will work its way to Congress and ultimately come full circle when the President signs a spending bill (or bills). And perhaps more importantly, the President’s budget is useful for us as health care advocates because it lays out his ideas on how government spending should be prioritized for the upcoming year. Since the future of health care reform has been uncertain (to say the least!) over the past few weeks, we had been particularly eager to see how President Obama would address health care when laying out his budget priorities.

My colleague Camie Corrigan, assistant director for federal legislative affairs, and I were tasked with pouring through the dense budget documents in order to pull out any details that might affect children or children’s hospitals. The first stop for us, as I suspect it has been for N.A.C.H. staff for the past ten years, was the budget for the Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees the Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education Program (CHGME). CHGME is a federal program that was initiated by N.A.C.H. and its member hospitals in 1999 to help defray the costs incurred by children’s hospitals for training physicians. We always receive lots of calls on “budget day” from children’s hospital staff curious to know how we fared on CHGME, so we know to have that number handy ASAP! This year the President has requested funding for CHGME of $318 million, which is great news for our hospital advocates who have worked hard on this program over the last ten years.

The President’s budget also calls for other investments in health care. It proposes funding for health information technology; health centers that provide primary care to underserved populations; research and treatment for individuals with autism spectrum disorders; prevention and wellness activities; biomedical research; and to fight childhood obesity. We were particularly happy to see that the President proposed a six-month extension of temporary Medicaid funding for the states (known as the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, or FMAP) that was first authorized as part of the stimulus bill passed last year.

And last, but certainly not least…health reform. Encouragingly, it is clear from the President’s budget documents that he remains committed to reform. Our understanding is that in putting the budget together, the White House assumed that some version of health reform will be passed this year. So the budget includes funding that splits the difference between the House and Senate versions of the bill.

Now that President Obama has laid out his priorities for the upcoming fiscal year, it will be interesting to watch over the next several months to see how Congress responds!

Photo courtsey of Talk Radio News by way of Flickr.

Comments

[Health care]

I love All Ur Blog...
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Viva-Magazine-Your-Premium-Womens-Natural-Health-Magazine/262734921452?ref=ts