U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today highlighted critical investments in President Obama’s 2011 HHS budget that will protect the health and safety of America’s families.
“Under this budget, we will provide the health and human services that Americans depend on more effectively, slashing waste and focusing programs on results. And we’ll make many of the necessary investments our country has been putting off for years, including investments in fighting health care fraud, strengthening our public health infrastructure, and getting serious about health and wellness,” said Sebelius. “This budget is a big step toward a healthier, stronger America.”
The President’s budget helps build the foundation for health insurance reform. The budget strengthens the health care system and improves access to care by investing $995 million to address the shortage of health care providers in underserved areas, increasing funding to expand services at Health Centers by $290 million and allocating nearly $80 million for work to spread the adoption and use of health information technology.
The budget also makes landmark investments to fight health care fraud and requests $1.7 billion for fraud fighting at HHS, including $561 million in Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control (HCFAC) discretionary funding, an increase of $250 million over the FY 2010 enacted level. Estimates indicate that these investments will generate $9.9 billion in savings from increased recoveries and prevention efforts. In addition, the Budget proposes legislative and administrative changes that will save $14.7 billion in Medicare and Medicaid over ten years.
To support families with young children, the budget invests a total of $6.6 billion in the Child Care and Development Fund, an increase of $1.6 billion, and invests in reforms to make Head Start and Early Head Start stronger. And because many families are caring for young children and elderly relatives, the budget provides an additional $102.5 million for a new Caregiver initiative that will increase services including training for caregivers and assistance for elderly individuals and their families so seniors can remain in their homes longer.
The budget also helps protect families from disease and illness and improves public health, by investing $1.4 billion to transform the food safety system and help prevent food borne illness. Other important investments to stop diseases before they start include $954 million to help prevent smoking and tobacco use and $20 million for a new initiative in CDC to help prevent chronic disease.
Additionally, the budget builds on the President’s commitment to invest in science and research by increasing funding for the National Institutes of Health by $1 billion to support innovative projects from basic to clinical research.
“There is no question that the hard-working people of this country have been tested over the last few years,” added Sebelius. “In his State of the Union Address, President Obama urged Americans to rise to the challenges posed by our current difficulties, and pledged that as a country we would face these challenges together. I believe this budget lives up to that commitment.”
Overall, President Obama’s budget includes a total of $911 billion for HHS in Fiscal Year 2011. For more information on the budget, visit www.hhs.gov/budget. Highlights from the budget are included below:
Reducing Health Fraud Enhancing Medicare and Medicaid Program Integrity: Reducing fraud, waste, and abuse in government spending is a top priority for the President. The Budget includes $561 million in discretionary resources, an increase of $250 million, to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid program integrity activities, with a particular emphasis on fighting health care fraud in the field, increasing Medicaid audits, and strengthening program oversight while reducing costs.
This investment, as part of a multi-year effort, will augment existing resources for combating health care fraud and abuse and save $9.9 billion over ten years. The additional funding will better equip the Federal government to minimize inappropriate payments, pinpoint potential weaknesses in program integrity oversight, target emerging fraud schemes by provider and type of service, and establish safeguards to correct programmatic vulnerabilities.
The Budget also includes a set of new program integrity proposals that will give HHS the necessary tools to fight fraud by enhancing provider enrollment scrutiny, increasing claims oversight, improving Medicare’s data analysis capabilities, and reducing over-utilization of Medicaid prescription drugs. These proposals will save approximately $14.7 billion over 10 years.
Improving Quality of and Access to Health Care Health Insurance Reform: Congress is focused on health insurance reform to provide security and stability for Americans with health insurance and expand coverage to those Americans who do not have insurance. These reforms will improve the quality of care, lower costs for families and businesses, and help reduce the Nation’s deficit.
Strengthening the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS): The Budget includes $3.6 billion, an increase of $186 million. The request is necessary to meet current administrative workload demands from recent legislative requirements and continuous beneficiary growth. The request provides targeted investments to revamp information technology (IT) systems and optimize staffing levels so that CMS can meet the future challenges of the Medicare and Medicaid programs and can be an active purchaser of high quality and efficient care.
Specifically, $110 million of CMS’ increase is for a new, comprehensive Health Care Data Improvement Initiative to transform CMS’s data environment from one focused primarily on claims processing to one also focused on state-of-the art data analysis and information sharing. These changes are vital to modernizing the Medicare and Medicaid programs by making CMS a leader in value based purchasing, improving systems security, and increasing analytic capabilities and data sharing with key stakeholders.
Increasing Child Health Care Access: Additional resources distributed to States and Territories after the enactment of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 resulted in 38 percent of States expanding or improving child health coverage in FY 2009. Forty seven States now cover children in families with incomes at or above 200 percent of the Federal poverty guidelines. In September of 2009, CMS awarded $40 million in grants to assist in enrolling the over 5 million children who are uninsured but eligible for either Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Strengthening the Health Professions Workforce: The Budget includes $995 million, an increase of $33 million, to address the shortage of health care providers in underserved areas. This funding will expand loan repayment programs for physicians, nurses, and dentists who agree to practice in medically underserved areas. This funding will also enable nursing schools to expand their nursing student capacity, and it will provide for workforce development grants that will enable States to increase access to oral health care.
Expanding Health Centers: The Administration remains committed to building on Recovery Act investments and ensuring quality access to health centers. The Budget includes an increase of $290 million for further expansions of health center services, including the creation of 25 new access points in communities without access to a health center, and will facilitate the integration of behavioral health into the existing health centers’ primary care system. With this increased funding, health centers will be able to serve a total of more than 20 million patients in FY 2011.
Improving Health Outcomes of American Indian and Alaska Natives: The President is committed to improving health outcomes for American Indian and Alaska Native communities and supporting the provision of health care for American Indians and Alaska Natives. The Budget includes nearly $5.4 billion, an increase of $354 million, that will enable the Indian Health Service (IHS) to focus on reducing health disparities, supporting Tribal efforts to deliver quality care, ensuring that IHS services can be supplemented by care purchased outside the Indian health system where necessary, and funding health facility and medical equipment upgrades. These investments will ensure continued improvement to support the Administration’s goal of significantly reducing health disparities for American Indians and Alaska Natives.
Enhancing Health Information Technology (Health IT): The Budget includes $78 million, an increase of $17 million, for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) to advance the President’s health IT initiative by accelerating health IT adoption and electronic health records (EHRs) utilization as essential tools to modernizing the health care system. The increase will enable ONC to lead and coordinate Federal health IT efforts while implementing and evaluating Recovery Act health IT programs.
The Recovery Act also established Medicare and Medicaid health IT incentive programs to provide an estimated $20.6 billion over 10 years for the adoption and meaningful use of EHRs. In FY 2011, these programs begin providing incentive payments to eligible providers. The use of EHRs will improve the reporting of clinical quality measures and will promote health care quality, efficiency, and patient safety.
Protecting Access to Medicaid for Low-Income Families: To continue to fulfill the President’s commitment to ensuring access to health care for millions of Americans, the Budget includes a proposal to extend by an additional six months, through June 2011, the temporary Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) increase provided by the Recovery Act. The extension will result in an additional $25.5 billion to States for maintaining support for children and families helped by Medicaid.
Advancing Patient-Centered Health Research: The Budget includes an additional $261 million, including program support costs, in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to support new research projects. This funding will support the generation, translation, and dissemination of research that will improve health care quality and efficiency by providing patients and clinicians with evidence based information to enhance medical decision making. The Budget also continues to support research in this area within NIH. HHS continues to invest the $1.1 billion for this research provided in FY 2009 to AHRQ, NIH, and the Office of the Secretary by the Recovery Act.
Promoting Public Health Transforming Food Safety: The President is committed to securing our Nation’s food supply by transforming and improving our food safety system. The Budget includes $1.4 billion, an increase of $327 million or 30 percent, for food safety efforts that will strengthen the ability of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to prioritize prevention, strengthen surveillance and enforcement, and improve response and recovery – key priorities of the Food Safety Working Group the President established in March 2009. CDC will improve the speed and accuracy of foodborne disease outbreak detection and investigation. FDA will increase inspections to improve the security of the supply chain and invest in the analytical tools needed to make data-driven decisions about how to best deploy food safety resources to prevent foodborne illnesses.
Reducing Tobacco Use: In June 2009, the President signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act, providing FDA with new authorities and responsibilities for regulating tobacco use and establishing the FDA Center for Tobacco Products. The Budget includes $450 million from user fees to reduce tobacco use in minors by regulating marketing and distribution of tobacco products, promote public health understanding of harmful constituents of tobacco products, and reduce the toll of tobacco-related disease, disability, and mortality. In addition, $954 million in funding from CDC, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), will further help reduce smoking among teens and adults and will support research on preventing tobacco use, understanding the basic science of the consequences of tobacco use, and improving treatments for tobacco-related illnesses.
Preventing and Treating HIV/AIDS: The Budget includes more than $3 billion, an increase of $70 million, for CDC and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to enhance HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment. This increase includes $31 million for CDC to integrate surveillance and monitoring systems, address high-risk populations, and support HIV/AIDS coordination and service integration with other infectious diseases. This increase also includes $40 million for HRSA’s Ryan White program to expand access to care for underserved populations, provide life saving drugs, and improve the quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Prevention: Reducing the burden of chronic disease, collecting and using health data to inform decision-making and research, and building an interdisciplinary public health workforce are critical components to successful prevention efforts.
The Budget includes $20 million for a CDC initiative to reduce the rates of morbidity and disability due to chronic disease in up to ten of the largest U.S. cities. These cities will be able to incorporate the lessons learned from implementing evidence-based prevention and wellness strategies of the Recovery Act’s Communities Putting Prevention to Work Initiative.
The Budget also includes $10 million at CDC for a new Health Prevention Corps, which will recruit, train, and assign a cadre of public health professionals in State and local health departments. This program will target disciplines with known shortages such as epidemiology, environmental health, and laboratory science.
The Budget also includes $162 million for Health Statistics, an increase of $23 million, to improve CDC’s ability to collect data on the health of the Nation for use by policy-makers and Federal, State, and local leaders. This increase will ensure data availability on key national health indicators by supporting electronic birth and death records in States and enhancing national surveys.
Addressing Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Budget includes $222 million, an increase of $16 million, for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). NIH research will pursue comprehensive and innovative approaches to defining the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to ASD, investigate epigenomic changes in the brain, and accelerate clinical trials of novel pharmacological and behavioral interventions. CDC will expand autism monitoring and surveillance and support an autism awareness campaign. HRSA will increase resources to support children and families affected by ASD through screening programs and evidence-based interventions.
Preventing Teen Pregnancy: The Budget includes $183 million within the Office of Public Health and Science for teen pregnancy prevention programs. These programs will support State, Tribal, Territory, and community-based efforts to reduce teen pregnancy using evidence-based models and promising programs needing further evaluation. The Budget also includes $22 million, an increase of $7 million, for CDC