I spent more than two decades of work in biomedical research policy, and there is no problem I hate to talk more than indirect costs.
These costs, which are more correctly called the costs of installations and administration (F&A), are the expenses associated with research difficult to attribute to individual research projects, such as public services, physical laboratory buildings or Security needs, they are therefore invoiced with the help of negotiated rates at the institutional level, between universities or research institutions and the federal government.
Make no mistake: these costs are essential to conduct medical research. Without them, the scientific company stops. This is why the Trump administration’s proposal suddenly Reduce the reimbursement rate f & a At the National Institutes of Health, catastrophic damage to research on which our country counts to combat diseases and improve the health of all Americans.
If these costs are so important, why do I hate talking about it? First of all, because it is an incredibly complicated and wobbly subject to explain. The reimbursement rate f & a that the federal government pays universities and research institutions is determined by a complicated set of policies and processes dictated by the management and budget office (OMB) and obscure federal agencies that most people have never heard of, such as the Division of Allowance Costs at the Ministry of Health and Social Services. This centralized process, which includes extraordinary quantities of documentation and strict surveillance, has been established for efficiency and responsibility, because the negotiation of a distinct F&A rate for hundreds of thousands of research subsidies on a basis individual makes no sense.
However, efficiency is not the same as simplicity. The simple fact of mentioning sentences such as the “applicable cost principles” and the “total modified direct cost” is enough to make the most patient eye frosting. It is not surprising that in recent discussions on the reform and optimization of NIH, the simplification of indirect cost rates is a perennial subject.
There are a number of ideas that could and should be seriously taken into account when we think about how to make the first biomedical research agency in our country to carry out its mission more optimally, including a more means rationalized to fully cover the real costs of research. But I think we can all agree that they should be based on the principle of not harming the world leader in the support of science to improve human health.
The second reason why indirect costs are not fun to discuss is that it is a subject that frequently opposed stakeholders in the community of research against each other in a false and unproductive debate. Many scientists express opposition to F&A costs, believing that money could be better spent for direct funding for them or suggesting that it is used to enrich university administration. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of how these costs work. F&A prices are a reimbursement of research costs already spent, part of the long -standing partnership agreement between research institutions and the federal government and are regularly examined to ensure that these expenses have not changed. The sudden ceilings in the F&A prices, as did the Trump administration, is like putting the costs of a business trip to your personal credit card, only to make your employer decide that they will not reimburse you Not for these expenses. Researchers may assume that fewer dollars dedicated to F&C will somehow signify more money in direct research funds, but that does not reflect reality on the grounds that these very real costs must come from somewhere. In simple terms, the F&A cuts at NIH are cups in vital biomedical research.
Finally, and perhaps above all, the reason why I hate talking about indirect costs is because he distracts the reasons why I have become a defender of biomedical research in the first place: because I really believe in the role of NIH In the support of science that helps Americans live healthier and longer lives.
As a scientist, I saw first -hand how fundamental knowledge leads to treatments and remedies against debilitating and fatal diseases. As a policy, I know that the United States has dominated and surpassed the world in biomedical research due to the long-standing and bipartisan commitment of our country to finance federal medical funding, and that distribution From these funds to scientists of each state leads to economic activity in cities and cities in the whole country. As a former federal leader who has spent many years at NIH, I have witnessed the indescribable hope that research represents for patients and their loved ones whose life has been upset by cancer or Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s. And as a mother who suffered the loss of a child to an incurable illness, I want nothing more than to make sure that no other person has to feel this inconceivable and heartbreaking pain.
These are the same reasons why the leaders of the congress met, through decades of partisan storms, to work in the aisle to guarantee that the NIH has the funding it needs to improve all our lives.
The administration’s plan to cap the NIH F & A prices is undoubtedly illegal, in an explicit violation of the law of credits which prevents NIH from deviating from the federal process of negotiating these costs. Although this may be a question for the courts to decide, it is up to the congress to answer the most imminent question: are you ready to remain silent and to monitor while the medical research ecosystem you have built is defeated , thanks to reckless and inexplicable political changes?
If the Congress or the Administration wants to talk about how NIH can find new and better ways “Rewards of subsidies carefully prohibited to ensure that taxpayers’ dollars are used in a way that benefits the American people and To improve their quality of life ”, as an advertisement announcing the ceiling F & has other, so I will be glad the first to speak of legitimate political proposals on how to make the NIH even better than today.
But the disruptive change in the F&A policy of NIH will only hurt those whose work leads to the medical advances of tomorrow and to all the people whose life and the future depend on the promise of medical research.
Carrie Wolinetz is president of the practice of innovations on biosciences at Lewis-Burke Associates and former chief of staff to the Director of NIH.