The National Institutes of Health is one of America’s great government successes - a globally recognized flagship institution for research that has funded many of the most significant biomedical advancements of the last century. NIH grants led to the discovery of devices such as drug eluting stents, which help more than 500,000 patients a year avoid bypass surgery, and therapies like tamoxifen, a front line drug for treating breast cancer. As a result of our government’s investment in the NIH, Americans live longer, healthier lives than ever before.

 

Despite the NIH’s crucial role in advancing health care, its funding in recent years has not kept pace with the rate of inflation, limiting the size and number of grants that are awarded to worthy scientists and hampering research efforts. Following a period of significant expansion of the NIH budget that started in the late 1990s, the amount of money dedicated to this critical institution has been declining steadily since 2003. Failing to increase funding for the NIH effectively cripples the work of grant recipients at academic institutions across the country. Such a reduction in monies going toward health research has drastic implications for our nation’s healthcare spending and quality of life.

 

The President’s projected NIH program level budget for 2008 of $28.3 billion will result in a net reduction of almost $500 million for research funding. To get back on track to 2003 funding growth levels, the NIH will need an increase of 6.7 percent each year for the next three years. However, current bills in both the House of Representatives and the Senate propose increases of less than 3 percent, woefully below the Department of Health and Human Services’ estimates of what is needed just to keep up with inflation.

 

There are few things that give us a better return on our healthcare investment dollars than increased NIH funding. For every dollar the government spends on the NIH, private industry will, in general, spend two more to develop and commercialize the early research generated from the NIH investment. That research leads to new treatments for acute and chronic diseases that today cost Americans dearly. A $30 billion investment in NIH today seems a prudent choice when one considers that American households spend $582 billion annually on healthcare to fight those same diseases NIH funding is designed to tackle.

 

It is important to understand what a continued decline in NIH funding will mean for our aging U.S. population. Our national health expenditures are projected to exceed $4 trillion by 2015; the devastation of Alzheimer’s disease among baby boomers alone is expected to cost the federal government more than $1 trillion. And of course, as anyone who has watched a loved one suffer from a chronic disease can tell us, the cost to society cannot be measured only in dollars.

 

The NIH budget must rise at least to a level concurrent with the rate of biomedical inflation. Failure to start the process now will only make it more difficult to catch up in the future. California stands at the forefront of scientific research, and we should be vocal in encouraging lawmakers to make NIH funding a priority. We need to urge Congress to spend more, not less, to support research to understand and cure these diseases. Contact your Congressional representative and ask him or her to raise the budget at the NIH and get us back on track. The health of the nation depends on it.