AAMC Chief Public Policy Officer Atul Grover, M.D., Ph.D., Nov. 19 sent a letter to the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) Appropriations Subcommittee urging members to restore the “harmful” sequestration cuts to national priorities, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), health professions training and education programs administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), for fiscal year (FY) 2016.
In his letter, Dr. Grover requests that NIH “receive at least $32 billion” in FY 2016. Dr. Grover also calls for AHRQ to have its budget authority restored to $364 million. Furthermore, he urges appropriators to “retain the limit on extramural grant salaries at Level II of the Executive Pay Scale,” support physician training through the Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education program, and fully restore the proposed rescissions to both the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund.
The Labor-HHS bill will likely be included in an omnibus spending package, which should be introduced in Congress the first week of December. Congress hopes to pass the omnibus bill before Dec. 11, which is when government funding is set to expire.