Michigan is joining 22 other states and the District of Columbia in suing the Trump administration over some $11 billion in public health funding that was abruptly cut last week, including some $380 million to Michigan.
That money, which was originally allocated during the COVID pandemic and set to sunset later this year, was rescinded on March 24 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), state health officials said.
It included funding for some 300 grants administered by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), including: a mental health grant to support children with severe mental illness, substance abuse use disorder services for rural populations, a CDC grant for statewide lab upgrades for infectious disease testing, and vaccine clinics and translation services for non-English speaking patients, according to the Michigan attorney general’s office.
“Congress authorized and appropriated new and increased funding for many grants in COVID-19-related legislation to support critical public health needs,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office said in a statement Tuesday.
“...Yet, with no legal authority or explanation, Secretary Kennedy’s HHS agencies on March 24 arbitrarily terminated these grants 'for cause' effective immediately claiming that the COVID-19 pandemic is over and the grants are no longer necessary.”
The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order to invalidate the mass grant terminations, Nessel’s office said.
HHS did not respond to a request last week for details and information about the cuts to Michigan. But a spokesperson for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) said the agency “expects to save over $1 billion in Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2020 (H.R. 6074) and American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (H.R. 1319) funds.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago. HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to Make America Healthy Again,” the SAMHSA spokesperson said via email last week.
What do the cuts mean for local public health?
In the past year or so, state and local health departments have been using the COVID-era money for infectious disease prevention and emergency preparedness, as well as mental health and substance abuse services.
Losing the money will impact the following services, according to the AG’s office:
- “A substance abuse grant to enhance substance use disorder services for underserved and marginalized populations, including pregnant women, women with young children, opioid users, and rural populations.
- “CDC funding for the control of infectious diseases that was funding laboratory upgrades statewide, throughout both peninsulas, and without which the MDHHS’s and local health departments’ capacity to respond to healthcare-associated infections in healthcare facilities is effectively eliminated.
- “And CDC grants for the immunization and vaccination of children that were being used for vaccine ordering and storage, hosting vaccine clinics, and supporting translation services for vaccination information to non-English speaking parents and patients. The State was due a remaining balance of $49 million toward these awards and intended to use part of these funds to provide routine immunizations and immunizations against seasonal respiratory viruses to children, adults, and vulnerable and underserved populations.”
MDHHS is “working with our affected subgrantees and have advised them to hold on spending any unobligated funds, while we review possible reductions in funding and evaluate next steps,” a health department spokesperson said in an emailed statement Tuesday.
All 45 of Michigan’s local health departments will be affected, as well as 46 community mental health services programs, according to the AG’s office.
“The HHS cuts threaten the urgent public health needs of states around the country at a time when emerging disease threats—such as measles and bird flu—are on the rise,” the AG’s office said.
Norm Hess, executive director of the Michigan Association for Local Public Health (MALPH), said the abrupt stop-work order issued last week caught health departments completely by surprise.
“You have contracts with companies under these grants. you might have staff that are affected by these grants, and all of a sudden, it's like, you can't spend this money anymore,” Hess said. “Local health departments often have no other funding source to backfill something like that.”
It may also mean that taxpayer money that’s already been spent on efforts like expanding regional lab capacity, may have been wasted.
“If people want to remember back in the day when this all started, you'd get a COVID test, you had to send it off, and there were a lot of problems in getting those results back in a timely manner. And so some of this money was meant to expand regional capacity within our state, so that those could be processed closer to home, we could get faster results,” he said.
“If you're in the middle of expanding a lab or purchasing equipment, and now all of a sudden, that money has turned off, in my opinion, that's not saving money. It's wasting money that's already been spent because you don't end up with the final product.”
Washtenaw County’s public health department estimates the grants amount to about 6% of the department’s budget, said public information officer Susan Ringler-Cerniglia.
“People have this reaction, which is logical: ‘Oh, the pandemic's over. Why the heck are we still providing pandemic funding?’” she said. “But what that fails to recognize is kind of the broken system we have for funding public health, and that is that it's underfunded. So that often doing core services and functions for us is really this constant turnover of funding from emergencies.”
In Washtenaw County, the money was funding emergency preparedness work, outreach to communities that were disproportionately affected by the COVID pandemic, outbreak tracking, and vaccine public awareness and information campaigns.
“To have it kind of clawed back suddenly is very disruptive and challenging for the work that was still happening,” she said.
