Against the backdrop of House Republicans' efforts to cut funding for public broadcasting and their purely symbolic vote to repeal the healthcare reform law, their recommend cut of $156-million from the Center for Disease controls funding for immunization programs for the current budget year has gotten relatively little attention. Not surprisingly, this is expected to impact lower income families and the working poor disproportionately hard.
What's especially ironic about this move, considering (dubious) GOP claims that the healthcare act would lead to rationing of care, is that this move may cause just that. In a report in Mother Jones the executive director of immunization advocacy group Every Child By Two, Amy Pisani, commented that public health officials, who lack the funds to acquire vaccine for all who need it will "have to pick and choose."
This shameful proposal is an interesting complement to the House's purely political moves against funding for Planned Parenthood. That cut is misleadingly pitched as necessary to keep federal money from paying for abortions, despite it already being prohibited by both federal law and President Obama's 2010 Executive Order, but in actuality will make it harder for women to receive certain basic healthcare. The immunization cuts are likely to deprive families of critical medicines. Taking together, they show exactly why the perception exists that the GOP will do everything it can to ensure you get born but after that you're on your own.
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