Medical Budget Spending

Providing Cancer Clinical Trials for Medicare Beneficiaries Less than three percent of cancer patients participate in clinical trials of new therapies. Many scientists believe that higher participation could lead to the faster development of therapies for more of those in need. Moreover, the elderly, who are most likely to get cancer, often cannot participate in such trials because Medicare does not pay for such treatments until they are established as standard therapies. Americans over 65 make …

…research that will lay the foundation for new innovations to improve health and prevent disease. It invests $1.15 billion in the National Institutes of Health (NIH)--the largest increase in history. Moreover, to ensure that the Nation continues to make important investments in biomedical research, the budget proposes--for the first time ever-- sustained increases in the NIH over five years. By the year 2003, funding for biomedical research will increase to over $20 billion, or by nearly half.