Members of Congress voted to create a new agency within HHS that establishes itself at the forefront of healthcare innovation and technology, but some say this is what the NIH is tasked to do, argues The Wall Street Journal editorial board in an June 26 op-ed.
While the NIH is notoriously bureaucratic, and at times slow to produce timely research, the authors argue that it can be streamlined. They argue that the solution to the NIH's slow manner is not the creation of another agency but instead repair of the NIH itself. They also argue that the creation of the new agency within HHS will dampen the incentive of the private sector to innovate by potentially reducing the rewards of innovation.
"The U.S. doesn't need another bureaucracy to fund new technologies. We need the existing bureaucracies to encourage private innovation," they write.