If the ambitious vision does eventually pass Congress, lawmakers must still deliver the tens of billions of dollars it will take to translate it into reality.
The bill starts by formally placing responsibility for pandemic response — in Burr's words, “mission control” — within a new White House office, on a similar footing as national security. In the Obama White House, the National Security Council had a global health unit, but that was disbanded under the Trump administration.
The bill calls for close attention to the medical supply chain, everything from raw materials for drug manufacturing, to protective equipment that was in such short supply in the first wave of the pandemic, to tests that continued to be an issue in the omicron wave. “We've got to spend in proportion to the damage done, and the damage done has been huge,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the authors. “Being penny-wise now would be foolish.”
Some major public health groups say they like the overall direction of the Senate bill but want to examine the details more closely before officially taking a stand. Dr. Georges Benjamin of the American Public Health Association said there's concern that making the CDC director a Senate-confirmed position might inject too much politics into the agency's work.
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