Congress Clears Omnibus Legislation Funding HHS and Other Federal Programs for FY08
January 2, 2008
Before Congress recessed for the Holidays on December 19th, The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 was passed. Included in the legislation was the Department of Health and Human Services Appropriations Act of 2008, the bill which sets the amounts of appropriated funds that will be given to HHS and its agencies for fiscal year (FY) 2008.
The bill provides funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), as well as the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).
The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) is appropriated $61,302,000 for its operations, which is nearly the same as the amount ONC received in FY07. The FY08 amount is $57 million less than the amount proposed by the President, and is ten million less than the amount that the House and Senate originally agreed to, before the President issued a veto threat for unrelated reasons. ONC's appropriations are what fund health IT projects such as the NHIN Implementation awards.
AHRQ, an HHS sub-cabinet level agency that has issued grants aimed at increasing quality of healthcare through the use of interoperable health IT, will receive $334,564,000 in total for all agency activities, and HHS budget documents estimate that $45 million of this amount will be available for health IT-related programs. For FY07, AHRQ's HIT portfolio budget was $50 million.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) saw an increase in their funding for their information technology systems over 2007 levels. The VA information technology department was appropriated $1,966,465,000, which is nearly $750 million more than their 2007 funding.
The omnibus bill is the product of months of wrangling between Congress and the White House. Initial drafts of independent bills to fund HHS were threatened with a veto by the President because they were above the spending limits that the President had asked for in his budget proposal last year.
