President’s Proposed Budget to Address Rising Drug Costs and PHE Stockpiles

Last week congressional leaders held hearings on the President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2022. The House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee held hearings to discuss the budget with Xavier Becerra, the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). The discretionary budget authority proposal is $131.8 billion and the proposal for mandatory funding is $1.5 trillion. For the health care industry, this budget focuses on racial health disparities, vaccines, mental health, staffing issues, home health, the opioid crisis, emerging health threats, and handling future public health emergencies, among other things. Strengthening health care is a focus of the budget plans to work on lowering the cost of prescription drugs by letting Medicare negotiate prices. Additional Medicare improvements include reducing deductibles for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace, improving Medicare benefits, creating a public option and giving people aged 60 and older the option to enroll in Medicare. The budget also proposes $905 million to be allocated to the continuation of the Strategic National Stockpile for future PHEs. The CDC would receive $8.7 billion through this proposal and National Institutes of Health $51 billion.

Click on this link to watch the Ways and Means Committee hearing.

Click on this link to watch the Finance Committee hearing.