USA - Obama's 2010 Budget Blueprint on Health

[sharon sanders]

2010 Budget Blueprint

President Obama released his Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Blueprint, which includes an historic commitment to health care reform and a down payment on the principle that every American should have quality, affordable health care. The budget builds on President Obama?s previous work to make health care more affordable and accessible. Already, President Obama has signed legislation to provide health care to 11 million children, including 4 million previously uninsured children. The President also signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which protects health coverage for 7 million Americans through COBRA while making critical investments in health information technology, comparative effectiveness research and prevention programs.

The President?s Budget also:

• Invests over $1 billion for Food and Drug Administration food safety efforts to increase and improve inspections, domestic surveillance, laboratory capacity and domestic response to prevent and control foodborne illness.
• Invests over $6 billion for cancer research at the National Institutes of Health as part of the Administration?s multi-year commitment to double cancer research funding.
• Invests $330 million to increase the number of doctors, nurses, and dentists practicing in areas of the country experiencing shortages of health professionals.
• Strengthens the Indian health system with sustained investments in health care services for American Indians and Alaska Natives to address persistent health disparities and foster healthy Indian communities.
• Builds upon the down payment made in the Recovery Act for the President?s ?Zero to Five Plan? for early childhood education and development and creates a new Nurse Home Visitation program for first-time low-income mothers and mothers-to-be.

Read President Obama?s full federal Budget Blueprint.

 

[Amish Country]

Re: USA - Obama's 2010 Budget Blueprint on Health

The administration and congress's answer seems to be coming in the form of a new "Food Safety" bill poised to be released from committee: HR 875. It is a long bill and a bit of read covering the governments plans to take over the regulation of food production and processing. For all its length it is vaguely written and could mean anything up to and including the federal government micro managing food production and processing. Some bloggers fear it could outlaw organic and sustainable farming. I doubt this will help to bring down food costs as farmers and food processors scramble to deal with yet more government interference and regulations.

It is good to see that some of the billions of dollars of bailout are going to be used to hire more trained, competent food inspectors to enforce the existing laws and hopefully ensure unsafe imports, like the tainted milk and honey do not make it into the US food supply. IMHO we need more feet on the ground enforcing the laws we have and leadership in how existing regulation are interpreted to allow small farmers to compete on a more even planning field with the larger industrial farms.