Secretary Tommy Thompson's Remarks To The Senate Committee on Appropriations & Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education

Good morning. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Harkin, Members of the Subcommittee: thank you so very much for inviting me to testify today.

In my first two years at the Department we have made tremendous progress in our efforts to improve the health, safety, and well-being of the American people. We continue to make extraordinary progress in providing health care to lower-income Americans. Through waiver and state plan amendments granted to states, we have expanded access to health coverage for more than 2.2 million people, and have expanded the range of benefits offered to 6.7 million other Americans.

To build on this progress, the President proposes outlays for HHS of $539 billion. $539 billion represents an increase of $36.8 billion-or 7 percent-over last year's request, and an increase of more than $109 billion-or 25 percent-since 2001. The discretionary part of the budget increases $1.64 billion-or 2.6 percent-to $65 billion of budget authority. This would be $606 million, or 1.5%, higher than the enacted FY 03 appropriation.

$539 billion is a big number, and I have a solemn responsibility as Secretary to make sure every one of those dollars is put to good, effective use. I owe it to the people who pay the taxes-and I owe it to the people who consume the services.

One way to ensure these dollars are effective is to work with this Committee and other committees to improve and strengthen our two largest health programs: Medicare and Medicaid. I discuss these programs in my written testimony.

We are also making progress on keeping health costs down and preventing chronic diseases by encouraging Americans to lead healthier lives.

We all have heard the disturbing news about the prevalence of diabetes, obesity, and asthma that could be prevented through simple lifestyle changes. Diabetes alone costs the Nation nearly $132 billion each year in direct medical costs and in indirect economic costs. Yet modest lifestyle changes -- such as getting more exercise and losing weight -- can reduce the risk of this and other diseases dramatically.

The HHS budget, consistent with the President's HealthierUS effort, proposes a coordinated, Department-wide endeavor - Steps to a HealthierUS - to promote healthier lifestyles emphasizing prevention of obesity, diabetes, asthma, heart disease, stroke, and cancer. The FY 2004 budget includes an investment of $125 million for targeted disease prevention.

To improve patient safety, the Food and Drug Administration is proposing two new rules to prevent errors with medication. The first of these proposals will require bar coding on almost all pharmaceuticals and blood products. This rule would help reduce the number of medication errors by allowing health care professionals to use bar code scanning equipment to verify that the right drug in the right dose is given to the right patient at the right time.

We also support the creation of Patient Safety Organizations to collect data that can improve procedures and prevent errors.

Thanks to your strong support, Mr. Chairman, we recently completed a doubling of the budget of the National Institutes of Health. This year, we continue that commitment with a budget of $27.7 billion, a net increase of $549 million over last year. As a result of one-time projects being funded in FY 2003, and not needing to be re-financed, actual NIH research investment will rise by about 7 percent.

I would like to focus the remainder of my remarks this morning on a topic that is probably on everyone's mind this week: bioterrorism.

The attacks of September 11th made it clear that the threat of terror is graver and more imminent than at any time in modern history. The anthrax attacks made it clear that the threat of terrorism includes weapons of unprecedented power and ingenuity. And the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of outlaw regimes makes it ever more urgent that we prepare for a growing variety of threats.

We've already done a great deal. Today, the United States is better prepared than ever to meet the threat of terrorist attack with a biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear agent. The national stockpile of medical countermeasures is large, and getting more extensive all the time.

But that stockpile may not be enough. Unfortunately, the medical treatments available for many pathogens have improved little in decades. The smallpox vaccines available today hardly differ from those of the 1960s. Some treatments for radiation and chemical exposure have not changed much since the 1970s. And some diseases, such as Ebola, have never had an effective medical countermeasure.

These diseases lack effective or modern treatment in part because they are rare. By contrast the treatment of the vast majority of common, naturally occurring illnesses has improved dramatically as a result of ongoing innovations from biomedical research and development. Heart attacks were often fatal in the 1970s, but they are much less so today.

And better detection and therapeutic options have significantly improved survival rates for many kinds of cancer over the last 20 years.

We must bring that sort of progress to the rare yet deadly threats posed by bioterrorists. And that's why President Bush announced Project BioShield. He would spend roughly $6 billion over ten years on new countermeasures to prepare America for a bioterror attack. This proposal would speed up research and approval of vaccines and treatments and ensure a guaranteed funding source for their purchase-just the latest in our forward-looking efforts to protect the homeland.

Our Department is doing well at getting bioterrorism money out to state governments-in many cases, faster than they can spend it.

As we speak, Mr. Chairman, researchers are working to identify the cause of the recent cases of what has been called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. While we have no reason to think this syndrome is related to influenza, the appearance of similar symptoms in scattered locations reminds us that this is the way an influenza pandemic might start.

The President's budget foresaw and prepared for an influenza outbreak. It proposes to spend $100 million to ensure the nation has an adequate supply of influenza vaccine in the event of a pandemic.

Due to the constant changes in the circulating influenza strains, we cannot stockpile influenza vaccine, and the current manufacturing methods could not meet the Nation's needs in the event of a pandemic.

Funds will be used for activities to ensure a year-round influenza vaccine production capacity and the development and implementation of rapidly expandable production technologies. We will work closely with industry to accomplish these goals.

The President has made improving our nation's health and health care one of his biggest priorities for the year. By working together, we can make it one of our proudest achievements. I look forward to all the work, and I know our discussion this morning will get things rolling.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Last Revised: April 8, 2003

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