President Biden’s FY 2023 Budget Proposal

Partnership to End Addiction applauds the Biden administration’s Fiscal Year 2023 budget request for investing in our nation’s mental health and improving our response to the addiction crisis. While Congress ultimately controls appropriations, the President’s budget demonstrates the administration’s priorities, which clearly recognize the need to take a proactive, health-based approach to addiction and mental illness. Protecting our national security and stability requires much more than funding our military and law enforcement. It requires investing in the mental and physical health of every member of our nation across the lifespan, mitigating the circumstances that increase risk and shoring up the factors known to protect people from developing mental health and substance use problems. This year’s budget proposal contains billions of dollars for addressing the mental health and addiction crises, as well as several policy proposals to improve prevention and the accessibility, availability, and quality of care.

Overall, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) budget includes $20.8 billion in discretionary funding for behavioral health programs (a $4.9 billion increase over FY 2022) and $11.4 billion (including $10.8 billion in discretionary funding) for programs to address the substance use crisis. The National Drug Control budget includes $42.5 billion ($3.2 billion increase). This includes $24.3 billion (57.1%) for demand reduction and $18.2 billion (42.9%) for supply reduction.

The budget would increase funding for mental health services, including youth mental health services, and for substance use prevention and treatment. It would improve insurance coverage for mental health and addiction services and increase parity enforcement in private insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare. It proposes to remove the word “abuse” from the names of HHS agencies to decrease stigma. It would also increase funding for the behavioral health workforce, school-based mental health and substance use services, behavioral health services for populations including veterans and rural residents, improving maternal health and early child care and wellbeing, mental health and substance use research, tobacco control efforts, criminal justice reform, drug interdiction, and addressing social determinants of health. It would protect medical marijuana programs in states and territories that have legalized them, but would not extend these protections to recreational markets.

For a more detailed description of the highlights of the budget proposal, see our President’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Summary, and see HHS’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget in Brief, National Drug Control Budget FY 2023 Funding Highlights, Budget of the U.S. Government Fiscal Year 2023, and Budget Appendix.