In March, a 3-year-old girl receives the MMR vaccine at a clinic in Texas. Texas was among the states where the Trump administration canceled the most public grants earlier this year. (Photo: Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images)
After the Trump administration cut billions in state and local public health funding from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year, the final impact on states has divided sharply along political lines.
Democratic-led states that sued to block the cuts kept most of their funds, while Republican-led states lost most of their funds, according to a novel report. analysis from the KFF research organization.
The uneven developments underscore how politics continue to shape health care in the United States. The nearly 700 CDC grants were worth approximately $11 billion and were awarded by Congress during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, state and local health departments have spent or planned to spend the money not only on Covid-19 related responses, but also on preventing other infectious diseases, supporting mental health and substance utilize, supporting aging public health infrastructure and other needs.
According to KFF, the end of CDC subsidies initially affected red and blue states roughly equally. California, the District of Columbia, Illinois and Massachusetts – all led by Democrats – had the highest number of grant terminations.
But then nearly two dozen blue states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration in April, asking the court to block the stipends from expiring. They he argued the federal government had no authority to rescind funds already allocated.
“The Trump administration’s illegal and irresponsible decision to withdraw funding for life-saving health care is an attack on the well-being of millions of Americans,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in an April report statement announcing the lawsuit.
“Cutting this funding now will reverse our progress in fighting the opioid crisis, throw our mental health systems into chaos and leave hospitals struggling to care for patients.”
A federal judge sided with blue states and blocked the appeals – but she narrow her order to the jurisdictions that filed the lawsuit.
Nearly 80% of the subsidy cuts have already been restored in blue states, compared with less than 5% in red states, according to KFF’s analysis.
Currently, four of the five states with the most grant cancellations are Republican-led: Georgia, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas. Democratic-dominated California retained all of the subsidies originally revoked.
In the West and Midwest, Democratic-led Colorado, which joined the lawsuit, had 10 of 11 grants revoked. KFF’s analysis found that its Republican-led neighbors that didn’t file suit, including Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming, lost all their grants.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the photo caption. Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at: avollers@stateline.org
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