Arlen Specter’s role in limiting swine flu preparedness

President Obama at last night’s press conference welcomed Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) into the Democratic Party by suggesting the move would free him to support health care reform and other issues where a “yes” vote is more in line with his constituents needs and opinions. Voting for health care reform, even had Specter remained a Republican, was never in doubt, as American Prospect writer Ezra Klein noted yesterday. The question, however, is what kind of health care reform package Specter will support.

Earlier this year, Specter voted in favor of expanding the children’s health insurance program. He’s also a lead sponsor of legislation that would make it easier for small businesses to form pools to buy insurance for their employees. Whether an R or a D, Specter is a reliable vote for expanding coverage through the existing system. But that doesn’t mean he will back more progressive options like creating a public plan to compete with private insurers.

The signature issue of Specter’s career, even before his two bouts with leukemia, was channeling government money into medical research. The Delaware River valley houses one of the nation’s main clusters of pharmaceutical industry research and development facilities, and sowing those fields with the seed corn of government-funded science is his baby. He chairs ResearchAmerica, the main advocacy group for greater government spending on the National Institutes for Health. And the Pennsylvania senior senator is deeply entwined with the cancer research establishment, which will receive a huge boost from the recently enacted stimulus package.

Indeed, his devotion to increased research spending can sometimes blind him to other critical needs. Last night, the president asked Congress to earmark another $1 billion for swine flu preparedness, money that Sen. Specter played the key behind-the-scenes role in removing from the recently enacted stimulus package. To get his vote on the final legislation, Democrats on the conference committee inserted a massive $10 billion increase for NIH not included in either the House or Senate versions of the bill.

The House version had contained $5 billion for public health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and state and local public health departments, which are on the front lines of fighting disease outbreaks. The Senate version contained $3 billion. But when the bill emerged from conference, there was just $650 million for those crucial agencies while NIH, thanks to Sen. Specter, got its huge bump. The vast majority of that NIH money will go out to the nation’s universities in basic research grants.

Meanwhile, the New York Times’ Kevin Sack reports this morning that state and local health departments lost nearly 10,000 out of 160,000 jobs last year and will lose a similar number this year due to budget cuts. “The entire system is lining up to decrease resources at the time we need them most,” Paul Jarris, executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told the Times.

A back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests it would take about $1 billion over two years to keep all those public health workers on state and local government payrolls. That’s about 10 percent of the NIH increase.

Research is important, even crucial. But every pie has limits, and how you divide it has consequences.