The House is set to vote Wednesday on a bill that would deny more than $15 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services to administer the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which was created in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act last year.
The measure is among a handful of bills to come out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that are aimed at dismantling key portions of the health reform legislation. Other so-called de-funding bills target money to support grants for state exchanges, funds for building school-based health centers and development grants for teaching health centers and health education programs.
[See also: HHS announces $130M in grants for healthcare training; HHS announces $51M in state grants for health insurance exchanges]
“These bills share a common theme: Protecting the American taxpayer,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the committee's chairman. “Our committee said we would focus on jobs, reducing spending and repealing the healthcare law, and the bills passed by the committee today make real progress toward accomplishing these goals.”
Republicans have targeted prevention and public health funding, saying it can be spent with no Congressional oversight and constitutes a virtual slush fund for the HHS. They said they want the funds approved on an annual basis, thus giving lawmakers more direct control over how and where the money is spent.
“Every member of this committee has a history of voting for both mandatory spending and discretionary spending,” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said in March as the bills were moving through committee hearings.
House Democrats said the GOP is simply trying to repeal health reform by choking off funding.
“The Senate won’t join us in passing a bill repealing Obamacare all at once,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). “So we will work to repeal it step by step.”
Earlier this month more than 50 national public healthcare organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and Families USA, penned a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to oppose the bill being debated on Wednesday.
“The (Prevention and Public Health) Fund is a dedicated investment in community prevention and state and local public health infrastructure and workforce and is a much‐needed down payment on the health and economic well being of all Americans,” the letter stated. “The fund is among the most significant provisions in ACA that help achieve a goal you set during the 2008 campaign: ‘Simply put, in the absence of a radical shift towards prevention and public health, we will not be successful in containing medical costs or improving the health of the American people.’”
According to supporters, the fund has provided more than $1 billion for smoking cessation programs and to help public health departments with IT upgrades.