About a year ago, I wrote the following post at the JAMA Forum (this is the beginning):
Last week, the House Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services, and education approved a spending bill, which moves along this week to the full committee for consideration and possible amendments. Then, it’s on to a vote in the House of Representatives.
The bill is generating a fair amount of attention because it takes some drastic steps with respect to government funding of research. Specifically, per Academy Health:
[I]t completely eliminates the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ] (Sec. 227), and prohibits any patient-centered outcomes research (Sec. 217) and all economic research within the National Institutes of Health [NIH] (Page 57, line 19).
I have to state my conflict of interest right off the bat. I’ve been funded by AHRQ in the past, and I continue to have some of my research funded by them today. But that doesn’t mean I can’t discuss the important work that might be eliminated if this bill were to pass as currently written.
Go read the whole thing. I could easily have written the same thing today.
