Senators are raising their eyebrows at President Obama’s proposed cuts to the federal immunization program while the measles keeps spreading around the country.
At a committee hearing Tuesday on the recent outbreaks of infectious diseases, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., asked top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official Anne Schuchat to explain why the president has asked Congress for $50 million in cuts to a program that provides vaccines to the uninsured or those without adequate health coverage.
The agency would make up for the cuts by reducing vaccine purchases, replied Schuchat, who directs the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Now that more people have insurance coverage under the healthcare law, state health departments can bill private plans for the vaccines instead of paying for them with federal funds, she said.
But Mikulski didn’t appear convinced, warning that she’ll bring up the issue when Obama’s budget is considered at an upcoming appropriations hearing. “I think this is a valid area of inquiry and bipartisan cooperation,” she said.
Nor did Collins. “It just seems to me this is the wrong time to be reducing funding in this area,” she said.
The CDC said Monday there are now 121 confirmed cases of measles in 17 states, a 19 percent increase in one week. Eight-five percent of the cases are related to an outbreak in Disneyland that began in December, the agency reported. No deaths have been reported.
The Tuesday hearing was the first time members of Congress have gathered specifically to discuss the outbreaks — and they appeared eager to dispel the idea that vaccines can result in long-term harm to children.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, who led the hearing as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, asked Schuchat whether vaccines can cause autism in children.
“There have been dozens of studies … to try to understand the link between vaccines and autism, but those studies have been incredibly reassuring,” Schuchat said.
