Senator Collins Calls for Continued Bipartisan Support for Alzheimer’s, Biomedical Research

Click HERE and HERE for individual photos.

Click HERE to watch and HERE to download the full interview.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Susan Collins, Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and co-chair of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s Disease, took part in an event with the Alzheimer’s Association and Punchbowl News where she discussed her work to increase federal investments in Alzheimer’s research and biomedical innovation. Senator Collins spoke about the toll of Alzheimer’s on families, the need for greater support for caregivers, and bipartisan action she has taken in Congress to protect NIH and other research agencies from significant proposed funding reductions.

Last month, Senator Collins introduced the bipartisan Alzheimer’s Screening and Prevention (ASAP) Act. This bill would require the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to create a pathway to cover blood biomarker tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease, giving patients and their families more time to plan, seek support, and pursue the best options for care for their loved ones.

Senator Collins has long led successful legislative efforts to advance Alzheimer’s research, prevention, and treatment. In the 118th Congress, there were 1,868 standalone health care bills introduced in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Of those bills, only 15 passed both chambers and were signed into law. U.S. Senator Susan Collins led or co-led 5 of those 15 bills to passage with strong bipartisan support, and 3 of those 5 bills dealt directly with brain health and Alzheimer’s: the National Alzheimer’s Project Act (NAPA), the Building Our Largest Dementia (BOLD) Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act, and the Alzheimer’s Accountability and Investment Act.

Senator Collins on the Importance of Alzheimer’s Research

Click HERE to watch and HERE to download video of this exchange

Andrew Desiderio: I want to shift now to the topic of the day, Alzheimer's disease, research, prevention, and funding, critically, because you are the Chair of the Appropriations Committee, so you have a really big role in all of this. But I want to step back a little bit. So, you are the founder and co-chair of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer's Disease. How did you first get involved in working on this issue in the Senate?

Senator Collins: Well, like many people, my family has been harmed by this devastating disease. I lost my father, my grandfather, my two uncles, and a brother-in-law recently to Alzheimer's. So, I've seen firsthand how absolutely devastating it is, not only for the person who has Alzheimer's, but also for the caregivers, which are usually family members. And it is just a horrific disease. It's also one of our nation's most costly diseases. Last year alone, we've spent $360 billion caring for people with Alzheimer's. If the current trajectory continues, we'll spend a trillion dollars on Alzheimer's by the year 2050. So, it's something that, whether you look at it from a humanitarian perspective or a fiscal perspective, that warrants our paying a lot more attention to it.

[…]

Andrew Desiderio: Senator, I want to note that the Administration has requested a funding increase specifically for Alzheimer's funding. So, does that give you some optimism here, that despite the actions the Administration has taken to cut back on NIH funding, to lay off employees, that they at least maybe recognize the need to get behind something like this, which you guys have done in your appropriations bills as well.

Senator Collins: I do think it's a very good sign. If I were the President, I would embrace this and do a “Warp Speed” approach, the way we did with COVID. And I think this is something that affects so many families. And it's absolutely devastating to look into the eyes of a loved one and receive no sign of recognition in return. You lose the person before you physically lose the person. And it's just heartbreaking. And it also puts a tremendous toll on the caregivers. My mother took care of my father at home for years before he spent the last part of his life in the Veterans' Home in our hometown of Caribou. And it takes a tremendous toll. And think of people who leave their jobs to take care of a parent with Alzheimer's. We have a shortage of professional caregivers, and sometimes there's a resistance to having an outside caregiver come in and provide that care. And that's why, when you ask, what else am I working on? Caregivers—providing assistance to caregivers, providing some sort of tax incentive so that they can afford—they bear a lot of costs themselves. It's uncompensated care. And we need respite care. It would have been so helpful to families if they have a place to take their loved one so they just get a bit of a break from the 24-hour, around-the-clock care. So, in addition to pushing forward on approval by CMS without delays, the ASAP bill, continuing our exciting investment in research that's paying off, I'm also focused on helping caregivers.

+++

Senator Collins on Protecting Biomedical Research Funding

Click HERE to watch and HERE to download video of this exchange

Andrew Desiderio: We talk a lot about your role on the Appropriations Committee playing a crucial role in all of this. The committee has approved NIH funding increases for the next fiscal year for research, for example. But, as you know, that the Trump Administration has sought to rescind or pause NIH funding in general this year. How confident are you that, if and when this is actually signed into law, the Administration will adhere to it?

Senator Collins: Well, we've put a number of guardrails in the bill to try to protect against the possibility of grants being rescinded, despite our rejection of the 41% cut that the Administration's budget proposed for NIH. It's not just NIH, it's also National Science Foundation, it's DoD medical research. There were a lot of cuts in medical research. Instead of cutting medical research by 41%, we were able to increase it by $400 million, and I'm really proud of that. And that bill was approved by a vote of 26 to 3 in the Appropriations Committee. Shelley Moore Capito and Tammy Baldwin are the Chair and Ranking Member of that subcommittee. Patty Murray is my counterpart at the full committee. We all worked as a team to make sure that didn't go through it. The bill also includes language requiring us, the Appropriations Committee, to be notified if grants are being clawed back or paused, so that we can evaluate whether or not it's justified, or whether or not it's an attempt to get around the increased funding that we have. So, that's an important guardrail as well.

Andrew Desiderio: You mentioned the 26 to 3 vote in the Appropriations Committee. I think what a lot of people don't realize is that it's actually been Republicans in the Senate taking the lead in pushing back against the Administration on some of these rescissions and proposed funding cuts. When you see a piece of legislation pass by that big of a margin in any Senate committee, I think that represents some pretty strong pushback to the Administration.

Senator Collins: It definitely does, and I'm really proud that we could put together that strong a vote. Now, we're trying to bring the bills to the floor, a five-bill package. Right now, we have a few problems that we're trying to work through, but I think that this is very exciting. Listen, from my perspective, there's no investment that is more worthwhile than our investment in biomedical research. And that is why the very first hearing that I held as the new Chair of the Appropriations Committee was entitled, "Biomedical Research: Keeping America's Edge In Innovation." And that's what we need to do.

###