Good Analysis of Proposed HHS Budget

Winners include:

NIH. The National Institutes of Health receives a $740 million dollar increase with an emphasis on new discoveries and personalized medicine.

Medical Malpractice Reform. The President has emphasized this point before and has included $250 million in the Department of Justice budget to implement and build on existing state pilots. This will be received very well in the Republican Congress but the Democratically controlled Senate will likely have a difficult time supporting bolder language. The Simpson-Bowles commission offered a package of ideas on this front, such as establishing special “health courts” and allowing a safe harbor for providers who follow medical best practices. This leads to a projected savings $17 billion through 2020.

CDC — Consolidated and Reformed Chronic Disease Program. The Administration creates a new Comprehensive Chronic Disease Prevention Program (CCDPP) by consolidating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Heart Disease and Stroke, Diabetes, Cancer, Arthritis and other Conditions, Nutrition, Health Promotion, and Prevention Centers, along with select school health activities, into one competitive grant program. This will finally coordinate federal efforts around chronic disease, creating a virtual “medical home” of sorts within HHS.

Two-year Doc Fix. This averts an almost 30 percent cut to Medicare rates for physicians for the next 24 months with offsets from lowering a Medicaid provider tax threshold in 2015, estimated to save $18 billion, and by increasin

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2011/02/14/health-care-in-the-2012-budget-looking-forward-and-backward/