December 14, 2009

House and Senate Pass Appropriations Act of FY2010

On Sunday, December 13, the Senate passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of FY2010 by a vote of 57-35. The Labor-HHS-Education spending bill would provide a total of $730.6 billion--$59.6 billion or 9 percent more than FY 2009. The bulk of this funding will support mandatory programs, including $2212 billion for Medicaid and $207.3 billion for Medicare.

The bill includes:

• $397 for AHRQ, including for the first time $23.6 million for investigator initiated research grants consistent with recommendations of the Coalition for Health Services Research.
• $138.7 million for NCHS
• $31 billion for NIH, with an estimated $806 million for health services research*
• $31.2 million for public health research at CDC
• $221 billion for CMS, with 31 million for health services research
• $581 million for VA research, with an estimated $83 million for health services research*

(*Note: Amount for health services research is based upon what we expect HSR would receive if it maintains its current proportion of the overall agency budgets.)

The House passed the bill on December 10 by a vote of 221-202. The President will sign the bill this week before the December 18 expiration of the continuing resolution.