AAMC Letter to House and
Senate Leadership on FY 2001 Labor-HHS-Education Spending
Bill
December 6, 2000
The Honorable Dennis Hastert
Speaker
United States House of Representatives
U.S. Capitol, Room 232
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Mr. Speaker:
As President of the Association of American Medical Colleges
(AAMC), I write to urge you to pass the FY 2001 Labor, Health
and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations
bill (H.R. 4577) as quickly as possible with funding levels
as close to the pre-election agreement as possible. The AAMC
represents the nation's 125 allopathic medical schools, approximately
400 of the nation's major teaching hospitals and health care
systems, more that 87,000 faculty in 91 professional and scientific
societies, and the nation's 67,000 medical students and 102,000
residents.
The pre-election agreement on H.R. 4577 includes a $2.7 billion
(15%) increase for the National Institutes of Health - the
third installment in the bipartisan effort to double the NIH
budget by FY 2003 - a $29 million (9.6%) increase for health
professions education programs and a $71 million (36%) increase
for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, as well
as needed increases for many other critical health and education
programs. Further delays in passage of this bill jeopardize
these funding increases, which have strong bipartisan support
in both the House and Senate as well as from the American
people, and will needlessly impair medical research and public
health programs important to the health of the American people.
We ask you to work with the Administration to ensure passage
of H.R. 4577 by the end of year with funding levels as close
to the pre-election agreement as possible.
Sincerely,
Jordan J. Cohen, M.D.
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