Big Cuts Proposed for Public Health & Social Determinants

The White House staff released the Executive Branch’s proposed budget for FY 21 last week.  I won’t spend a lot of time on it here because it will have little influence on what actually comes out of Congress because of the fact that different parties control the House and Senate. 

The basics of the proposal include a 9% cut to the HHS including a $693M cut to CDC and a $742 cut to HRSA. The overview of the 9% HHS cut says that it includes reductions on the Medicaid side of CMS. I couldn’t find any of those cuts in the CMS line items except for a general $3.6B cut to state budget authority (with no detail) a $24B cut to various federal hospital insurance trust funds. 

The proposed budget says that “$1 out of every $7 spent in Medicaid, were considered an improper payment”. I had never seen that statistic before. They also say that their budget cut to Medicaid is due to the fact that the Administration will “… strengthen CMS’ ability to address weaknesses in provider screening, enrollment, and identification, as well as beneficiary eligibility determinations in Medicaid“. Maybe they expect to capture the cuts there?  Ok, then.

They also propose an 8% cut to USDA programs (especially SNAP).  They book those savings due to “…  SNAP work requirements and apply them consistently to able-bodied adults ages 18 to 65, unless they qualify for specific exemptions. Under the proposal, adults would be required to work, participate in job training, or volunteer at least 20 hours a week in order to receive SNAP benefits“.

USDA will get big increases in other areas like farm subsidies. The proposed budget says: “To help farmers survive the market shocks (read tariffs), the Administration has provided $28 billion in trade mitigation assistance and $5.7 billion in supplemental and ad hoc disaster assistance to farmers.” 

In fact, a third of farm income last year came from Government payments and crop insurance last year, and they don’t expect that to change.  

New AzPHA Preventing Firearm Violence Evidence Resources

Related Post