I'm madder than a giraffe with a sore throat...

…over the CDC budget, which Eli blogged about last week. As their budget gets cut further and further, the CDC leans more heavily on the Prevention and Public Health Fund (“Prevention Fund”) to pay for core functions. The problem is that the Prevention Fund was originally designed to fund new initiatives, not to fill in for ill-advised core budget cuts. And since the fund was established as part of the Affordable Care Act, it has now become a political target (and was already cut drastically as part of the payroll tax cut extension and Medicare “doc fix” deal). If you require further evidence of the tenuous status of the Prevention Fund, know that it has been termed “an Obamacare slush fund” by the GOP (note to whoever came up with that genius terminology: you are a colossal ***).

Ezra Klein had a great post last month about why prevention funding is so vulnerable in the current climate. In it he quoted Rick Mayes from the University of Richmond, on the “prevention paradox”:

“If public health measures are effective, the problems they are aimed at are often solved or never even materialize, thereby making them virtually invisible.

Few individuals have personal interactions with or know what epidemiologists, health program coordinators, virology trainers, and outreach specialists do. When individuals are spared from a disease because the air in their office building is clean, it is not immediately clear whom to thank or if thanks are even necessary. As a consequence, public health professionals, programs, and policies are largely invisible to the public and taken for granted.”

I agree with this, but I think the issue is even larger, and more depressing. The statement above assumes that if people were just informed of the consequences of not supporting prevention efforts, they would act differently. I don’t think so. I’m hearing more political candidates question the basic social contract, the very assumption that government has a legitimate role in providing for the common good (and that we all have an obligation to pay for it). I encourage you to listen to this podcast, entitled, “What Kind of Country”, which details some trade-offs that local governments are making when money runs out and citizens are no longer interested in paying to provide for the common good. I was particularly struck by the story of individual citizens refusing a small tax increase to keep all the streetlights on in their town, but willing to pay $300 out of pocket to keep the lights near their own house burning.