NIH might use stimulus funds for comparative effectiveness research that includes cost comparisons, acting director says

NIH Acting Director Raynard Kington on Thursday during a House Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee hearing said that the agency might use some of the $10.4 billion it received from the economic stimulus package to fund comparative effectiveness research that includes comparisons on the cost of treatments, CQ HealthBeat reports.

According to CQ HealthBeat, Kington's statements "could cause controversy among conservative lawmakers" who have said that the $1.1 billion in total comparative effectiveness funding should not go toward cost comparisons, which they say would lead to the rationing of health care.

Kington said that the agency would consider using part of the $10 billion in general funds NIH received from the package for funding "high quality applications" that include cost comparisons. He added, "We may not fund them with the $400 million set aside" for comparative effectiveness research, which "would depend upon the ultimate decisions about the definition that will apply to that pool of funds." An Obama administration official said that the $400 million could be used to fund comparative effectiveness research that includes cost comparisons but that the findings could not be used by Medicare as the basis of coverage decisions.

Kington said of the total $10.4 billion, $8.2 billion will be for scientific research; $1.3 billion will be for construction and equipment to upgrade NIH research facilities; $500 million will be directed to addressing a backlog of renovations needed at the NIH campus; and $400 million will be for comparative effectiveness research. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) last week announced that he would like to include the additional $10 billion to the base funding for NIH, increasing it to $40 billion (Reichard, CQ HealthBeat, 3/26).

Community Health Centers

HHS officials on Friday announced that community health centers will receive an additional $338 million in economic stimulus funding, in addition to the $155 million the centers were granted in the stimulus legislation, CQ HealthBeat reports. The money is part of the estimated $137 billion the agency received from the stimulus package. According to Health Resources and Services Administrator Mary Wakefield, the money will go to the 1,128 federally qualified health center grantees who provide care for low-income U.S. residents. She said, "More Americans are losing their health insurance and turning to health centers for care." HHS estimates that the funds will provide care for an additional 2.1 million U.S. residents over the next year, including one million uninsured residents (Adams, CQ HealthBeat, 3/27).