The Health and Human Services Portion (HHS) of the Obama budget established a reserve fund of $630 billion over ten years to finance fundamental healthcare reform.
The reserve is funded equally by new revenue and by savings proposals. If adopted, the goal is to put
America
further down the path of health care reform
Funding Highlights:
• Accelerates the adoption of health information technology and utilization of electronic health records.
• Expands research comparing the effectiveness of medical treatments to give patients and physicians better information on what works best.
• Invests over $6 billion for cancer research at the National Institutes of Health as part of the Administration’s multi-year commitment to double cancer research funding.
• Strengthens the Native American health system with sustained investments in healthcare services for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives to address persistent health disparities and foster healthy Native American communities.
• Invests $330 million to increase the number of doctors, nurses, and dentists practicing in areas of the country experiencing shortages of health professionals.
• Supports families by providing additional funding for affordable, high-quality child care, expanding Early Head Start and Head Start, and creating the Nurse Home Visitation program to support first-time mothers.
• Strengthens the Medicare program by encouraging high-quality and efficient care, and improving program integrity.
• Invests over $1 billion for Food and Drug Administration food safety efforts to increase and improve inspections, domestic surveillance, laboratory capacity, and domestic response to prevent and control food-borne illness.
In this budget, the President is committing roughly $63 billion per year for healthcare reform initiatives. The healthcare economy is currently $2.1 trillion, and his commitment in the budget represents 3% of the total healthcare budget, which is less than the predicted growth in healthcare spending. The total budget for Medicare will expand from $386 billion (2008) to $872 billion (2019). The President is predicting $317 billion in undefined healthcare savings over ten years.
As the President alluded to in his speech to Congress, we will see change, including healthcare reform but more than likely it will be incremental, and in this case very incremental.
President’s 2010 Budget HHS Section