Washington Post
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Accessed 9 March 2013

Sequester spin: The White House’s vaccine statistics
Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:00 AM ET, 03/08/2013
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.): “Let me get it straight. Under the president’s cut of $58 million to the [Section] 317 program, you think you could get around that to avoid cutting vaccines to children, but under a sequester, that the president blames on Republicans, you don’t know if you can do that?”

CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden: “We’re going to do everything we can to limit any damage that occurs because of the across-the-board cut, but it reduces our flexibility significantly.”

Harris: “Is it your testimony that under the president’s proposed cut of $58 million in his budget to the 317 program you could have avoided cuts to vaccines to children in Maryland?”

Frieden: “We believe that we could have maintained vaccination levels, yes.”
— exchange during congressional testimony, March 5, 2013

A colleague alerted us to this interesting exchange on Capitol Hill. Is this another case of sequester spin?

On the face of it, it looks suspicious. In the White House’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal,  the administration had sought a $58 million cut in funding for the Section 317 Immunization Program, which mainly gives grants to states and localities for child and some adult vaccinations, primarily those who do not have enough insurance to be fully vaccinated. (The program gets its name from the Vaccine Assistance Act, or Section 317 of the Public Health Service Act, which was enacted in 1962.)

Yet, in raising the alarm about the sequester, the administration has highlighted the decline in vaccinations that it claims would result from sequestration. The White House Web site displays an interactive map, which when you click on Maryland, it declares: “2,050 fewer children will get vaccines for diseases like measles and whooping cough.”  It’s even worse for Virginia: 3,530 children would supposedly be affected.

What’s going on here?…

Full analysis here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/sequester-spin-the-white-houses-vaccine-statistics/2013/03/07/798295e2-877a-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_blog.html