HHS Spending Money to Keep from Going Bankrupt
The Administration announced a new $1 billion “slush fund” for workforce grants today – money coming out of the larger $15 billion “slush fund” created by Obamacare’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. According to an HHS fact sheet, the grants will be awarded beginning in March 2012, and “approaches…that can begin within six months of award” – i.e., by September 2012 – “will also be given priority.” (Funny timing that – anyone think there might be an important event happening in the fall of 2012…?)
The larger issue is that this new funding just duplicates existing health workforce programs, many of which were created in other sections of the health care law. Among the 159 new boards, bureaucracies, and programs created by Obamacare are many related to workforce development; here are just a sample:
- Grant program to plan health care workforce development activities (Section 5102(c), p. 1275)
- Grant program to implement health care workforce development activities (Section 5102(d), p. 1279)
- Pediatric specialty loan repayment program (Section 5203, p. 1295)
- Public Health Workforce Loan Repayment Program (Section 5204, p. 1300)
- Allied Health Loan Forgiveness Program (Section 5205, p. 1305)
- Grant program to provide mid-career training for health professionals (Section 5206, p. 1307)
- Grant program to fund nurse-managed health clinics (Section 5208, p. 1310)
- Grant program to support primary care training programs (Section 5301, p. 1315)
- Grant program to fund training for direct care workers (Section 5302, p. 1322)
- Grant program to develop dental training programs (Section 5303, p. 1325)
- Grant program to promote geriatric education centers (Section 5305, p. 1334)
- Grant program to promote health professionals entering geriatrics (Section 5305, p. 1339)
- Grant program to promote training in mental and behavioral health (Section 5306, p. 1344)
- Grant program to promote nurse retention programs (Section 5309, p. 1354)
Apart from the fact that this program duplicates existing government efforts, placing priority on “projects that rapidly hire, train and deploy…health care workers” may well be entirely the wrong way to control the growth of health care spending. This “spend money to keep from going bankrupt” approach may be helpful to the President’s re-election efforts, but it certainly won’t slow spiraling federal spending – and may actually work against efforts to slow skyrocketing health care costs.