CDC Complains ‘Trump Pulling Zika Funds’

The GOP’s bill to repeal and replace Obamacare has largely been under scrutiny by both sides. Many Republicans feel the new version isn’t a repeal, rather, it is an amended version of the current Obamacare. And while this may well be true, one place where change is seemingly sure to happen is the funding of vaccine-related CDC work. A $1 billion slush fund for the CDC may well be yanked so long as the Trump administration’s new version is pushed through Congress.

The fund was created in 2010 as a part of the Affordable Care Act under the guise of preventing illnesses.

As you can imagine, the CDC director is upset, but what’s worth noting is the examples she uses when condemning Trump in a letter she wrote. She cites the example of Zika. Zika never manifested into anything close to what the CDC and WHO predicted.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Anne Schuchat, acting CDC director, told NBC News. “Resistance is a problem now, because it is a threat to modern medicine itself.”

Earlier this month a group of 500 public health organizations wrote (PDF) President Donald Trump a letter warning him of the “dire consequences” of repealing the fund.

“Despite the growing and geographically disparate burden of largely preventable diseases, health threats such as the opioid epidemic, and emerging infectious disease outbreaks such as the Zika virus, federal disease prevention and public health programs remain critically underfunded,” the letter said. “Public health spending is still below pre-recession levels, having remained relatively flat for years. The CDC’s budget authority has actually decreased by 11.4% since FY 2010 adjusted for inflation, and the Prevention Fund has helped to make up the difference.”

Is the CDC taking credit for the prevention in this rhetoric, or simply attempting to raise concerns that risks remain a potential threat? Neither scenarios are seemingly accurate. Many Republicans see the fund as a waste.

“Look, it’s a slush fund,” Congressman Andy Harris of Maryland, a Republican physician who sits on the House appropriations health subcommittee, told STAT. “It’s been used by the secretary [of health and human services] for whatever the secretary wants. It’s a misnomer to call it the Prevention and Public Health Fund, because it’s been used for other things, and it’s about time we eliminated it.”

Trump sincerely needs to consider firing everyone and just starting anew.
Photo by Raed Mansour