Maine Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins is expressing her opposition to funding cuts to Medicaid and the National Institute of Health (NIH).
Collins spoke at Monday’s World Medical Innovation Forum in Boston, where she brought up the cuts under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“They announced that they were going to cut the NIH budget by an astonishing 41 percent,” said Collins. “That was very alarming to me.”
Collins is pushing to get a $400 million increase in funding for the National Institute of Health included in the budget, which faces a deadline at the end of the month.
The funding was passed in the Appropriations Committee Collins chairs.
She also expressed concern that the NIH funding cuts are draining the U.S. of the best minds in medical research. “Immediately, we saw China, Japan, Germany, France trying to take the best and the brightest and that really disturbed me,” Collins said.
In addition, Collins noted her push to get $50 billion for rural health care providers in the final text of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The measure is known as the Rural Hospital Transformation Fund. Collins did not vote in favor of the final bill because of its deep cuts to Medicaid, even though it included the rural health care spending.
Collins appeared for a fireside chat hosted by David Brown, MD, the President of Academic Medical Centers at Mass General Brigham Monday.
