Budget

President-elect Joe Biden late Thursday (Jan. 14) unveiled a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that would pump $20 billion into a national vaccination program that results in 100 million vaccinations by the end of his first 100 days.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Monday (Dec. 7) said the Senate will likely pass a bill to push back the expiration of government funding through next week and urged Democrats to support his COVID-19 relief legislation -- but his speech on the floor did not mention the $908 billion bipartisan COVID-19 relief package that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) previously said should serve as a starting point for negotiations.

The House Appropriations Committee on Monday (July 13) passed an HHS spending bill by a vote of 30-22 that would hike HHS’ funding by $1.5 billion.

The House Appropriations Committee late Monday (July 6) released a $96.4 billion draft fiscal year 2021 HHS funding bill that is $1.5 billion more than the 2020 enacted level and $11.1 billion above the president’s budget request.

Democratic presidential candidates on Tuesday (Feb. 25) blasted the Trump administration for requesting fiscal 2021 funding cuts for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak.

A group of Democratic senators sent a letter to President Donald Trump Friday (Feb. 14) urging him to direct the Department of Justice to drop its support of the high-profile Texas v. United States case challenging the Affordable Care Act after he failed to offer up alternative policies protecting people with preexisting conditions in his $4.8 trillion budget released Feb. 10.

Senate Finance Democrats pushed HHS Secretary Alex Azar to present the administration’s Affordable Care Act replacement plan on Thursday (Feb. 13), but Azar said the high-profile litigation over the constitutionality of the health law is a long way from being finished and at this point an ACA replacement is a hypothetical situation.

The Trump administration again proposed making it easier for states to extend Medicaid coverage for up to one year after a beneficiary with a history of substance use disorders has a baby, despite repeated calls by maternal health advocates to allow states to extend coverage for all postpartum beneficiaries.

The president’s fiscal 2021 budget proposes to rework Medicare Advantage quality bonus pay, eliminating both caps on what plans can receive and the so-called double bonuses certain plans can get, and to confirm beneficiaries’ diagnoses before CMS makes risk-adjusted payments to a plan.