December 18, 2009

President Signs into Law Appropriations Act of FY2010

On Wednesday, December 16, the president signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of FY2010. The Appropriations bill provides a total of $730.6 billion--$59.6 billion or 9 percent more than FY 2009. The Coalition for Health Services Research sent a letter on December 14 to the chairs of the House and Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations subcommittees thanking them for their support of health services research in FY 2010. The letter is available at http://www.chsr.org/policy.htm

Highlights of the bill include:

• $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.)