Dave McCormick and John Fetterman press Trump administration for answers on health funding cuts
In an Aug. 25 letter to HHS Secretary RFK Jr., the senators requested a briefing on the decisions and expressed concern over the impacts of abruptly ending health research projects.
Sens. Dave McCormick and John Fetterman announced on Monday that they are pushing the federal government to explain recent cuts to healthcare research funding in Pennsylvania.
In an Aug. 25 letter to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Pennsylvania senators requested a briefing on the decisions and warned that abruptly ending long-term projects after substantial federal investment “risks wasting taxpayer resources while disrupting research, eliminating jobs, and delaying innovations to improve patient care.”
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality stopped funding more than 100 grants nationwide in July, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. These cancellations affected multiple programs at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, disrupting studies into how healthcare systems can be organized and financed to improve health outcomes.
That included projects on improving translation services for hospitalized patients and expanding access to hormone therapy for menopausal women.
For McCormick, a Republican and close ally of President Donald Trump, the letter to Kennedy was a continuation of one of the few areas in which the senator has publicly broken with the president. Though McCormick has largely supported Trump’s drastic changes to the federal government, he’s pushed back on cuts to National Institutes of Health grants and other research funding.
The letter, which McCormick’s office publicized this week, is also the latest in a string of cross-aisle collaborations with Fetterman, a Democrat. It followed a similar request for information from Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on the Budget.
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter Monday. The department previously told the Inquirer that the AHRQ director determines “whether continuation funding is in the best interest of the federal government.”
“To be clear, these grants were not terminated – they were not awarded continued funding,” an Aug. 5 HHS statement said. “The Trump Administration remains committed to the responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
The senators’ public push to support institutions like CHOP comes after The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Fetterman privately dismissed CHOP leaders’ concerns when they were trying to set up a meeting with him last year.
“I’m convinced they just want free trips to DC,” Fetterman wrote to a staffer after indicating he did not agree with their concerns about changes to vaccine policies and Medicaid spending under Trump, according to the report.
Fetterman condemned the report as a “hit piece” and said the text exchange he had about CHOP was a “dumb joke.” Critics, including other Democrats who have repeatedly complained about Fetterman’s job performance, said it was further evidence that the senator was not doing his job.
» READ MORE: Funding was cut to life-saving medical research programs in Philly. Rep. Brendan Boyle demands to know why.
In their letter, the senators called on HHS to explain the criteria used to cancel the grants, how it plans to reallocate the funds that would have supported them, whether affected institutions can appeal the decisions, and what its long-term plan is for AHRQ.
“Over time, this instability risks weakening our nation’s leadership in scientific research,” the letter stated.
