California’s health care sector is expecting millions of dollars in cuts and potential job losses if the automatic federal spending cuts known as “sequestration” take place. Anticipated cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget could delay or erase research funding for 12,000 California scientists, says Dr. Kavita Patel, an adjunct professor at UCLA and a fellow at the Brookings Institute. She says the NIH is “one of the largest grant-making bodies to states like California, so it’s hard to know exactly how many researchers could lose their jobs.” California’s public health system is gearing up for about $17 million in cuts according to a recent story that ran on KPCC.
