On Friday President Biden's administration released a plan, which called for a nearly 25 percent increase in discretionary funding to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid crisis in the U.S.
The administration released a $131.7 billion budget request for the fiscal year 2022 for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is the center of the federal government’s pandemic response. The plan proposes $905 million for HHS to provide the strategic national stockpile of medical supplies and for restructuring efforts that began amid the pandemic.
The plan includes a request for a $10.7 billion investment for the opioid crisis, which is considered historic and is $4 billion more than the 2021 enacted level. The money will be directed to states and Native American tribes and towards federal research for opioid addiction and treatment.
Opioids are on the market for ages and have been used basically for pain relief for post-surgical pain, cancer-related pain, chronic or persistent pain. Opioids when used in proper dosage and along with a combination of other pain treatments, work in relieving pain successfully, unless there is a misuse or abuse of the drug.
The manufacturers are alleged of convincing the medical community that the medications were not addictive and were purely beneficial. This belief led to a rise in the number of prescriptions and sales unwarrantedly, resulting in a mass misuse of these drugs, to the extent that this was identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a public issue and named it an opioid crisis.
In February, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) released a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), which indicated that the rate of deaths from 2013 to 2019 related to fentanyl, and other synthetic versions of the addictive opioid pain killers increased by 1,040%. The report shows that opioid dependence is worsening in the nation.
The budget plan request is $25 billion more as compared to the fiscal year 2021 with an $8.7 billion investment in CDC. It is the highest budget increase in the last 20 years for the agency and the money will also be directed towards cancer research and other public health crises along with the pandemic.
Additionally, $6.5 billion will be directed towards the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a new federal body that would focus on research on cancer and other chronic diseases like diabetes and Alzheimers. This proposal is a part of a $51 billion request for the National Institutes of Health.
