Maybe giving too much credit

Health reporter Julie Rovner is perplexed thatRepublicans, who she maintains were once big supporters of public health, now seem to want to kill us all. Her examples of former Republican championship for public health are pretty narrow and a bit dubious. Funding for the NIH is mostly about biomedical research, not public health; and GW Bush ' s President ' s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, while certainly a good thing, was focused on Africa and probably as much about international relations as humanitarianism. But it ' s certainly true that the party has turned its back on these programs: The GOP-led House this year wants to cut funding for theDepartment of Health and Human Services by more than12 percent— includingnearly$4 billion from the once-revered NIH. “We cannot continue to make our constituents pay for our reckless DC beltway spending,” Rep.Robert B. Aderholt(R-Ala.), chair of theHouse Appropriations subcommittee that oversees HHS, saidwhen the bill came to the floor last month. And for the first time, bipartisan support for PEPFAR has eroded, with antiabortion Republicans blocking the latest renewal of the program. “Regrettably, PEPFAR has been reimagined — hijacked — by the Biden administration to empower pro-abortion international nongovernmental organizations, deviating from its life-affirming work,” said Rep.Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.)on the House floor in September. The bit about PEPFAR and abortion, BTW, is 100% bullshit...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs