2010-01-01

NHLBI Director Steps Down; Susan Shurin Named Acting Director

NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, has appointed Susan B. Shurin, MD, acting director of National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Dr. Shurin assumed the role of acting director at NHLBI on December 1, 2009, when Elizabeth Nabel, MD, left NHLBI to become president of Brigham and Women’s/Faulkner Hospitals in Boston.

Dr. Shurin is a pediatric hematologist and oncologist who held the positions of professor of pediatrics and professor of oncology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland before joining NHLBI in 2006. Dr. Shurin has been deputy director at NHLBI since 2006 and also served as acting director of NHLBI’s Division of Blood Diseases and Resources from March 2008 through January 2009. Dr. Shurin most recently served as acting director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

Obama Administration to Release FY 2011 Budget Proposal

President Barrack Obama will release his fiscal year (FY) 2011 federal budget proposal in early February 2010. Medical research advocates including ASH have been working to urge the Obama administration to maintain the commitment to science shown in the funding provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) by continuing to make research a priority in FY 2011.

It is expected that federal funding will be extremely tight and increases will require significant grassroots advocacy. With a number of federal programs and agencies such as NIH facing the prospect of ‘‘falling off a cliff” following the expiration of ARRA-related funding at the end of FY 2010, ASH encourages all members to visit the ASH Advocacy Center and participate in ASH’s current advocacy campaign by contacting President Obama to thank him for his commitment to science and to urge him to continue to make research a priority in his FY 2011 budget proposal.

Meanwhile, as this issue of The Hematologist went to press, Congress had just finalized FY 2010 appropriations for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of an “omnibus” spending bill. The bill includes $31 billion for NIH in FY 2010. Although this represents an increase of 2.3 percent over FY 2009, the approved FY 2010 funding level for NIH once again lags behind the rate of biomedical inflation.

Congress Blocks Physician Payment Cut

Congress included a measure in the Department of Defense spending bill that will prevent the 21 percent scheduled Medicare physician fee cut from taking effect January 1, 2010, and freeze physician payments at their 2009 level through February 28, 2010. Although Congress and the administration continue to pledge their commitment to replacing the current Medicare physician payment formula, it is not clear what will happen after February 28. To avert the 21 percent cut from going into effect at that time, new legislation will have to be passed. ASH will continue to urge Congress to repeal the flawed formula used to establish physician payments and will keep members apprised of all developments.

Health Reform Update

As this issue of The Hematologist went to press, President Obama was planning a meeting with the top four Democrats in the House and Senate — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) — to discuss the end-game strategy for the administration’s health reform bill. With several deadlines already missed, the Democrats appear to want to finalize health reform legislation before the end of January — making way for the President’s expected pivot to a focus on the economy/ job creation in his first State of the Union address.

The House of Representatives passed its version of health reform on November 7 and the Senate finally passed its health reform bill Christmas Eve after weeks of contentious debate. The next step in the legislative process is for differences between the House and Senate bills to be resolved. A chart summarizing and comparing the major provisions in the House and Senate health reform bills is available at www.hematology.org/News/2009/4534.aspx.

The merging of the bills will be a delicate balance, as several senators who voted for the measure —Sens. Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, in particular, made clear that any significant revisions could force them to rescind their support. The process is so fraught with potential political peril — and with the potential for significant procedural delay by Republicans — that there is talk that a formal conference committee to fuse the bill might be ignored entirely. The leadership meeting is seen as the first step by the White House and congressional leaders to find as much common ground between the two chambers as quickly as possible.

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