A large majority of Americans favor a plan to boost federal funding for medical research, while Congress continues to be at odds on the issue.
A poll released Friday found that 83 percent of Americans believed that a 20 percent increase in federal research funding for cancer is about right or should be greater.
The poll, conducted by STAT news service and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, found that only one in 10 Americans believed that the 20 percent research boost is too much.
About 46 percent of those polled said the 20 percent boost was just about right, while 37 percent believe the boost needs to be greater, according to a release on the poll.
“This support did not differ significantly by political party — a rarity in an era of staunch partisan polarization that often centers on the federal budget and government expenditures,” the release said.
The poll asked respondents about the White House’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, which dedicates $1 billion to fighting cancer and developing new treatments.
The poll’s results were based on responses from about 1,000 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.
Congress has been amenable to boosting medical research funding, giving the National Institutes of Health an extra $2 billion in the latest omnibus spending deal.
Last year, the House passed by a wide bipartisan vote a medical innovation package that included $10 billion in new funding for NIH over five years.
However, medical research funding is being hotly debated in the Senate.
Senate Democrats introduced a bill that would give the NIH an extra $5 billion a year, a boost over the House funding.
Republicans, however, are reticent to approving more mandatory funding for the NIH. Mandatory funding must be renewed every year at the same level, while discretionary funding levels can be altered.
Democrats argue that the NIH needs more consistent funding, pointing to the past decade in which Congress nearly doubled the NIH’s budget but then consistently underfunded the agency.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is clearing medical innovation bills that will act as a companion to the House package.
