Republican members of Congress are questioning why the administration transferred funds from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to operate HealthCare.gov.
Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) raised concerns at a Feb. 26 hearing about the HHS' transfer of millions of dollars from the NIH and CDC to help run the website. The HHS retaliated that it has the authority to determine what happens to the funds of agencies under its jurisdiction and that only 0.25 percent of each department's budget helped to finance the exchange, according to NPR.
The HHS transferred $454 million from the HHS' Prevention and Public Health Fund's $15 billion budget and $158 million from the Affordable Care Act's Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund. The single largest amount transferred in 2014, $34.2 million, came from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program, which provides assistance to poor individuals in heating their homes in the winter, according to the report. Another $12 million came from the NIH's National Cancer Institute and nearly $11 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Congressional Democrats did not appropriate enough funds for the exchange in the initial bill, assuming that most states would fund their own exchanges. However, 13 states chose to rely on the federal government to fund their exchanges, leaving the HHS to find the funds elsewhere, according to the report.