On June 26, the House Appropriations Committee released the Fiscal Year 2025 bill for the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. The appropriations bill provides a total discretionary allocation of $185.8 billion for fiscal year 2025 (FY25), which is $8.6 billion (4%) below the fiscal year 2024 (FY24) enacted score, $23.8 billion (11%) below the Fiscal Year 2024 effective spending level, and $36.2 billion (15%) below the President’s Budget Request.
Overall, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) could see a cut of 7% for FY25, including reduced funding to the CDC and NIH. The legislation would prevent any funding to administer, implement or enforce CMS’s Minimum Staffing Standards for Long-Term Care Facilities and Medicaid Institutional Payment Transparency Reporting final rule, or any successor or substantially similar rule. LeadingAge has advocated for such funding limitation in the FY25 HHS funding bill. The bill would also fund CMS’s State Survey and Certification program, which is funded with both mandatory and discretionary funds.
The FY25 HHS funding bill is the source of the program’s discretionary funding. For FY25, HHS requested $492,334 for the S&C program, which LeadingAge supports; the House subcommittee bill would provide $402.3 million, which is less than even FY23 funding. The bill would also fund quality improvement organizations. Fact sheets are available here.
The bill will be considered in subcommittee on June 27 at 7:00 AM CT. The markup will be live-streamed and can be found on the Committee’s website. LeadingAge will follow the markup and report on the outcome of the subcommittee.