Not to confuse buckets of $100B, today the Senate approved another $100B in Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) funding for various health care providers generally and others engaged in health care services and testing for COVID-19. Although HHS has yet to distribute $70B of the first bucket of $100B authorized under the CARES Act, Senate bill H.R. 266 would authorize additional funding to be distributed by HHS, roughly as follows:

  • $75B to hospitals and health care providers for reimbursement of COVID-19 related expenses and lost revenue, under the same terms as the CARES Act. As described in the CARES Act, these funds also can be used to build or lease temporary structures, purchasing medical supplies and equipment, PPE, testing supplies, increased workforce and trainings, and retrofitting facilities and surge capacity.
  • $25B to various governments and entities for expenses related to research, development, validation, manufacturing, purchasing, administering and expanding capacity for COVID-19 tests:
    • $11B for states ($2B), localities, territories and tribes ($750M) to scale-up testing, including for employer testing, with $4.25B allocated to areas based on relative numbers of COVID-19 cases
      • These recipients must submit a plan to identify how the resources would be used for testing and "easing COVID-19 community mitigation policies"
    • $1B to CDC for surveillance, epidemiology, lab capacity expansion, contact tracing and other analytics
    • $1.8B to the NIH to develop, validate, improve and implement testing and associated technologies, including those technologies in the rapid and point-of-care settings
    • $22M for the FDA
    • $825M for Community Health Centers and Rural Health Clinics
    • Up to $1B to cover the costs for testing the uninsured.

The House of Representatives is expected to approve the legislation by the end of the week, clearing it for the President's signature.

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