
What’s in Biden’s Proposed 2024 Budget for Healthcare
President Joe Biden published the US budget for the 2024 fiscal year, with a strong focus on spending in the healthcare industry. The full budget can be accessed here and a factsheet from the White House is available here. The full budget totals nearly $7 trillion and while it aims to create a deficit reduction in time, the plan still includes a $1.8 trillion shortfall in 2024.
Just because the plan was released doesn’t mean it’s what will end up happening though, as Republicans in Congress will look for concessions. It still gives us a strong sense of the priorities for this administration, although where cuts are ultimately made will define that further. So while this is a document that certainly won’t exist in its current form, it indicates what some of the big topics in healthcare the government will have its eye on going forward.
Government Programs
A large part of the budget was focused on a variety of government programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA); here are some of the highlights:
-
Increased power for the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices
-
Add $150 billion over 10 years to Medicaid home and community services
-
Offer subsidies to close the Medicaid coverage gap in states without expanded coverage
-
$6.4 billion for continued Veterans Affairs IT system upgrades and another $1.9 billion for the electronic health record modernization project
-
Make ACA subsidies permanent
-
Increase Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency budget, putting $98 million toward Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act implementation and $425 million for internal analytical/cybersecurity capabilities
Broader programs
The Biden budget proposal didn’t limit its scope to just programs run by the administration. National issues like public health and data collection were also prioritized. Below are a few of the highlights related to each of those issues.
-
The Centers for Disease Control would be allocated $10.5 billion to modernize public health data systems and to build public health capacity at the state and local levels
-
$471 million for ongoing funding of the White House’s Blueprint for Addressing the Maternal Health Crisis which will improve data collection and analysis on key issues like social determinants of health for the entire population
It’s an ambitious budget and some issues are likely to be more politically fraught than others. Republican lawmakers have already taken aim at putting a halt to or reversing the VA’s EHR modernization project. The ACA always seems to carry baggage with it as well although things are calmer at the moment with the more moderate lawmakers.