Kennedy Assures Panel on Funding for Health Research at Public Universities

WASHINGTON — Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a Senate panel on Tuesday that he’s looking at a variety of different ways to assure major universities continue to get research funding despite a ban on coverage of “indirect costs” that go along with such work.

“When it comes to health care,” Kennedy told the Senate Appropriations Committee, “the United States pays two to three times more per capita than comparable nations,” and yet our health care outcomes are demonstrably worse.

“Clearly something is structurally wrong,” he said. “All the money we’ve been pouring into these programs for years has not resulted in better health for Americans.”

“We must spend smarter,” he continued. “We will shift money away from bureaucracy toward direct impact.”

Yet at the same time, Kennedy acknowledged the concerns the senators have about funding reductions that could impact public schools in their states.

In February, the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced a plan to cut the rate it pays to universities and other grantees to cover the indirect costs of research to 15%.

Those indirect costs cover everything from administration and IT costs to the rents paid for facilities and sanitation.

On Tuesday, Kennedy said the NIH policy was proposed to curb rampant “abuse” of research funding at private universities with “tens of billions of dollars” in endowments.

At Stanford University alone, he said, “we wasted $9 billion last year on indirect costs and we are paying some of these universities up to 78%” to cover them.

“That money was not going to research,” he said, adding the situation is much different at public universities.

“We are very aware these universities are using the money well and it is absolutely necessary for them,” he said. “We are looking at a series of different ways we can fund those — though not through the independent indirect costs structure, which loses all control of how the money is spent.”

After the NIH announced its new curb on research funding, a federal judge in Boston blocked its implementation. The Trump administration is appealing that decision.

Because the case is pending, Kennedy said he had to refrain from getting into a detailed discussion of what those different funding mechanisms might look like.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue