Letter to Senators Harkin
and Specter on NIH Salary Cap
July
12, 2002
The Honorable Tom Harkin
Chairman
Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services,
Education, and Related Agencies
Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate
182 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Mr. Chairman:
The undersigned organizations and institutions, which represent
the nation's patients and leading medical schools, teaching
hospitals, universities, research institutes, and scientists,
thank you for your continued support of the National Institutes
of Health. The nation's future health will benefit from the
efforts Congress has led to double the NIH budget. As you
begin to consider the Fiscal Year 2003 Labor, Health and Human
Services, and Education and Related Agencies Appropriations
bill, we bring to your attention an issue of particular importance
that we appreciate your having also addressed in last year's
bill. Specifically, we urge you to retain the provision from
last year's bill that maintained the salary cap imposed on
extramural NIH researchers at Level I of the Executive pay
scale, which equals $166,700 in FY 2002. Congress recognized
the importance of this issue when it preserved the cap at
Executive Level I in last year's bill, which we very much
appreciate.
One of the benefits of the efforts to double the NIH budget
has been to rekindle the enthusiasm of the best and brightest
minds in the nation's medical research enterprise. It is especially
critical that these efforts include the increased participation
of physician-scientists to address the high national priority,
affirmed by the Congress, of strengthening clinical research.
The extramural salary cap disproportionately affects physician
investigators and serves as a deterrent to their recruitment
into research careers. Since the Federal government imposed
the salary cap on extramural researchers in 1990, medical
schools, universities and other research institutions have
been increasingly forced to bear more of the costs of physician-scientists'
(and other investigators') salaries. Unfortunately, this comes
at a time when discretionary funds from clinical revenues
and other sources traditionally available to cover these costs
continue to shrink. Retaining the extramural salary cap at
Executive Level I will allow our institutions to continue
to attract and retain the best investigators in our research
programs.
In addition, maintaining the salary cap at Executive Level
I will restore a level playing field between extramural investigators
and intramural NIH scientists who are eligible for Executive
Level I salaries under the Senior Biomedical Research Service
(SBRS).
We urge you to maintain the salary cap at the Executive Level
I when you consider the FY 2003 L/HHS appropriation.
Sincerely,
Academic Health Centers Clinical Research Forum
Academic Orthopaedic Society
Alzheimer's Association
American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology
American Academy of Dermatology Association
American Association for Dental Research
American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases
American Association of Immunologists
American College of Neuropsychopharmacology
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
American College of Surgeons
American Dermatological Association
American Gastroenterological Association
American Geriatrics Society
American Heart Association
American Pediatric Society
American Physiological Society
American Psychiatric Association
American Psychological Society
American Society for Investigative Pathology
American Society for Reproductive Medicine
American Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists
American Society of Hematology
American Society of Human Genetics
American Society of Pediatric Nephrology
American Thoracic Society
Association for Academic Surgery
Association for Medical School Pharmacology
Association for Surgical Education Foundation
Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine
Association of American Medical Colleges
Association of American Universities
Association of Family Practice Residency Directors
Association of Independent Research Institutes
Association of Medical School Microbiology and Immunology
Chairs
Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs
Association of Professors of Dermatology
Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics
Association of Professors of Human and Medical Genetics
Association of Professors of Medicine
Association of Subspecialty Professors
Association of University Anesthesiologists
Boston University School of Medicine
Boys Town National Research Hospital
Brown University
California Institute of Technology
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Coalition of Heritable Disorders of Connective Tissue
Columbia University Health Sciences
Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals
Dartmouth Medical School
Duke University Medical Center
Eastern Virginia Medical School
Emory University
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Harvard Medical School
Indiana University
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University
Michigan State University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mt. Sinai Hospital
National Association of Children's Hospitals
National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant
Colleges
National Coalition for Osteoporosis and Related Bone Diseases
New York Medical College
New York University School of Medicine
Northwestern University
Ohio State University Medical Center
The Protein Society
PXE International
Research!America
The Research Institute of University Hospitals of Cleveland
Society for Gynecologic Investigation
Society for Investigative Dermatology
Society for Neuroscience
Society for Pediatric Research
Society for the Advancement of Blood Management
Society of Teachers of Family Medicine
Society of University Surgeons
Stanford University
SUNY Upstate Medical University
University Hospitals of Cleveland
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine
University of Cincinnati
University of Cincinnati Medical School
University of Colorado School of Medicine
University of Florida
University of Houston
University of Illinois
University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of
Medicine
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
University of Michigan Health System
University of Minnesota
University of Missouri Health Care
University of Nebraska
University of New Mexico School of Medicine
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania Health System
University of Pittsburgh
University of Southern California
University of Tennessee Health Science Center
University of Virginia School of Medicine
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin-Madison
UPMC Health System
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Wright State University School of Medicine
Yale University
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