Statement by Secretary Becerra on the President’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget

HHS-specific budget investments will expand access care, lower health care costs, strengthen supports for children and families, and more.

The Biden-Harris Administration today released the President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2025. Following historic progress made since the President took office—with nearly 15 million jobs created and inflation down two-thirds—the Budget protects and builds on this progress by lowering costs for working families, protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare, investing in America and the American people, and reducing the deficit by cracking down on fraud, cutting wasteful spending, and making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share. The Budget makes critical, targeted investments in the American people that will promote greater prosperity for decades to come at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“This budget lays out a vision for a nation that invests in all aspects of health, fosters innovation, and supports its most vulnerable. This budget continues our shift from a nation focused on illness to one that promotes wellness,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. “HHS is at the center of some of the most important issues for American families. This budget demonstrates the Biden-Harris Administration is deeply committed to this work.”

More details about the HHS-specific budget investments are below:

Expand Coverage and Lower Healthcare Costs. Through this Administration, there are now more than 300 million Americans who have access to health care because they're insured – the most in our nation’s history. The FY 2025 budget builds on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, by extending Marketplace affordability, capping the cost of covered insulin products at $35 per month per insulin prescription for people with commercial insurance, and improving access to affordable prescription drugs for millions of Americans. The budget also expands Medicare’s new ability to negotiate directly with drug manufacturers to lower the price of some of the costliest single-source brand-name Medicare Part B and Part D drugs.

• The FY 2025 budget continues to build on the success of the Affordable Care Act, with a record of over 21.3 million people enrolled in the Marketplace in 2024. The budget works to lower costs to ensure even more Americans have access to coverage by making permanent the enhanced premium tax credits extended through 2025 in the Inflation Reduction Act. The budget provides Medicaid-like coverage to low-income individuals living in states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, paired with financial incentives to ensure states maintain their existing expansions. The budget extends the consumer surprise billing protections in the No Surprises Act to ground ambulances.
• The budget also promotes continuity of coverage and care for children enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), building on the existing 12-month continuous eligibility for children. These policies include allowing states to provide continuous eligibility to children from birth until the child turns six and for 36-month periods and prohibiting enrollment fees and premiums in CHIP. In addition, the budget continues the Administration’s efforts to reduce barriers to Medicare Savings Program enrollment.
• The budget extends Medicare solvency indefinitely, without cutting benefits.

Strengthen Maternal and Reproductive Health Outcomes. The Biden-Harris Administration has taken action to protect and expand access to reproductive health care, including abortion and contraception care – in every way possible. We are also fighting tooth and nail to stop the dismantling of the remaining rights and freedoms available to women across the country.

• HHS is committed to promoting access to reproductive healthcare. The budget provides $390 million, a 36 percent increase above FY 2023, to the Title X family planning program to meet the increased need for family planning services. Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated solely to providing individuals with comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services in communities across the United States.
• Across HHS, the budget invests in tackling the maternal health crisis, including $376 million for key programs focused on maternal mortality and maternal health equity.  This targeted initiative includes funding in HRSA to address disproportionate maternal mortality outcomes through expanding the maternal health workforce and access to care, within the Indian Health Service (IHS) to provide culturally-relevant maternal health care in Indian Country, within CDC to support prevention and surveillance, and within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for NIH’s Implementing a Maternal health and Pregnancy Outcomes Vision for Everyone initiative, an evidence-based approach to reduce preventable causes of maternal deaths and associated health disparities for women at all stages of pregnancy.

Transform Behavioral Healthcare. In three years, the Biden-Harris Administration has committed the largest investment in behavioral health in a generation. The Administration has increased the number of counselors in schools, improved support services for high-risk and underserved populations, and trained health care providers, families and school personnel on best practices for supporting young people taking medications for opioid use disorder.  

• As the number of deaths by suicide continues to increase, it is more important than ever that HHS expand access to the care people need when they need it. The budget proposes $20.8 billion in behavioral health investments across the Department in FY 2025, an increase of $2.2 billion above FY 2023. Additionally, the budget proposes to invest over $70 billion in new federal mandatory funding over 10 years, including proposals that would enable more Americans with commercial insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid to access mental health and substance use disorder services.
• The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s transition from a 10-digit number to 9-8-8 has been a success, and planned investments will help grow its impact. 9-8-8 is a 24/7 lifeline that provides people in crisis access to trained counselors. The Substance use And Mental Health Services Administration will dedicate $602 million to the 9-8-8 suicide and crisis lifeline, an increase of $100 million over FY 2023. This investment supports an expanded awareness campaign, increased infrastructure of the Lifeline, and increased technical assistance support to recipients, and maintains specialized services for LGBTQI+ youth, Spanish speakers and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community.
• The budget expands coverage for behavioral health services. The Community Mental Health Services Block Grant proposes an increase of $35 million for a total of $1.0 billion in FY 2025. The budget includes a legislative to provide $413 million in mandatory funds for a new Community Mental Health Centers grant program. The budget also improves behavioral health benefits for people with Medicare and Medicaid and in the commercial insurance market, with an emphasis on improving access, promoting equity, and fostering innovation.
• In addition, the budget increases access to treatment for substance use disorders and helps respond to overdose deaths. The budget includes a $20 million increase for the State Opioid Response program. This funding level includes a $5 million increase for the Tribal Opioid Response program to provide culturally responsive treatment to American Indian and Alaska Native people who are disproportionally affected by the overdose crisis. 

Improve the Wellbeing of Children and Families. High-quality early childhood education improves the lives of both children and their parents. HHS is committed to supporting the country’s most vulnerable children and families.

• The FY 2025 budget provides a lifeline to the parents of more than 16 million children by guaranteeing affordable, high-quality child care from birth until kindergarten for low- and middle-income working families. Most families would pay $10 per day, saving the average family over $600 per child, per month. 
• The budget also provides an additional $500 million for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. This increase will continue the historic progress the Administration has made in stabilizing the child care sector and helping more working families afford child care. These investments are critical to set our country’s children up for success – and support the adults who help them get there.
• The budget invests in free, voluntary, universal preschool for all of the nation’s 4-year-olds and charts a path to expand preschool to 3-year-olds. It also provides $544 million to support the Administration’s goal of strengthening the Head Start program by increasing wages for Head Start staff.
• Together, these investments will make early care and education programs affordable and available where families live and work in communities across the country, increase wages for early childhood education workers, and strengthen the economy.

Advance Science to Improve Health. HHS remains committed to the President’s goal to end cancer as we know it. The budget invests $2.9 billion across the Department in the Cancer Moonshot initiative to cut the cancer death rate by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years.

• The budget includes $716 million in discretionary resources at the NIH National Cancer Institute, a $500 million increase above FY 2023. The budget also extend the authorization of the 21st Century Cures Act Cancer Moonshot through 2026 and proposes $1.4 billion in mandatory resources in FY 2025. With these resources, the National Cancer Institute will continue to invest in opportunities to speed delivery of cancer drugs and vaccines to prevent and treat cancer and ensure access to current and new standards of cancer care and more.
• The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) will help lead and advance the goals of the Cancer Moonshot initiative by investing in the development of breakthrough technologies.
• The budget includes a $100 million increase for CDC to fund cancer prevention and control programs, including tobacco prevention, with states, territories and tribes.  

The Budget builds on the President’s record while achieving meaningful deficit reduction through measures that cut wasteful spending and ask the wealthy to pay their fair share. HHS remains at the center of some of the most important issues for American families – including expanding access to care and lowering health care costs, protecting Medicare, ensuring access to reproductive health care and improving maternal health care, transforming behavioral healthcare, improving care for older adults and people with disabilities, advancing cutting-edge research, meeting the health needs of Indian Country, preparing for future public health threats, ensuring access to high-quality education and support for children, improving customer experience for the American public, and supporting program operations and mission critical infrastructure.

For more information on the President’s FY 2025 Budget, please visit: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/.

For more information on HHS’ FY 2025 Budget, please visit https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2025/index.html.