Former CDC director Tom Frieden describes the a CDC request as “unsafe at any level of enactment. Would increase illness, death, risks to Americans, and health care costs.” and “Devastates programs that protect Americans from cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and other deadly and expensive conditions.”
Washington Post reports the Trump’s 2018 budget would decimate health research
The National Cancer Institute: a $1 billion cut
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute: a $575 million cut
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases : a $838 million cut. The administration would cut the overall National Institutes of Health budget from $31.8 billion to $26 billion.
The proposed cuts to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention drew an unusually sharp rebuke from former CDC director Tom Frieden, who went on Twitter to describe the administration’s CDC request as “unsafe at any level of enactment. Would increase illness, death, risks to Americans, and health care costs.”
Children seems to be a prime target of Trump. The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a program created 20 years ago for the children of lower-working class families and which currently insures 5.6 million children. would be slashed by at least 20 percent.
The agency’s center on birth defects and developmental disabilities also gets a 26 percent cut to its budget at a time when researchers have yet to understand the full consequences of Zika infections in pregnant women and their babies.
The budget calls for a 17 percent cut to CDC’s global health programs that monitor and respond to disease outbreaks around the world. It also cuts about 10 percent from CDC’s office of public health preparedness and response.
The budget document highlights $35 million that the CDC spends on childhood lead poisoning prevention. But the overall spending on environmental health would under Trump’s plan be cut by $60 million, down to $157 million, according the document.
The Food and Drug Administration would see a cut from $2.74 billion to $1.89 billion. User fees paid by manufacturers of drugs, devices and other products would be increased by close to $1 billion to pay for product reviews.