The NIH Cartel: How Taxpayer Dollars Fuel Progressive Enclaves

The Trump administration has focused critical attention on the National Institutes of Health, and for good reason. Despite the importance of its mission, the NIH has been hijacked to advance political agendas.

NIH research grants are heavily concentrated in a small number of congressional districts represented by progressives. In 2024, over half of NIH research grants went to just 20 congressional districts, all of which were located in liberal enclaves.

NIH funding is typically awarded by competitive grants judged by committees of experts. But assignment to those committees and designation as an expert is strongly influenced by having been a past recipient of federal funding.

This creates incestuous groups of researchers in a small number of universities, handing money to each other. If ever researchers outside of this bubble begin to win significant grant dollars, universities’ excessive overhead charges from federal funding can allow them to make generous salary offers and relocate those researchers to the closed circle of favored institutions.

Using taxpayer dollars to create and subsidize a narrow cartel for health research dominated by the Left introduces political bias, undermines public confidence in the results, and inflates costs.

First, these researchers’ concentration in progressive enclaves distorts the topics they select to study.

For example, a search of the NIH website reveals that there were 71,482 projects addressing the issue of diversity in the last decade. That’s more than the 47,018 projects that examined obesity—which is among the country’s most pressing public health challenges, affecting more than a third of all adults and almost a fifth of all children.

Similarly, the NIH website lists 2,735 projects on transgender issues in the last decade, compared to just 19 on the health effects of prayer.

This political distortion of health research is undermining public confidence in the NIH and scientific research more generally.

According to a recent survey, only 22% have “a great deal of trust” in “scientists who work for the National Institutes of Health,” with significantly lower levels of trust among Republican respondents. The fact that research is mostly done in elite coastal enclaves does not bolster confidence that health researchers are in touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans.

Concentrating research also increases how much taxpayers have to pay.

Universities charge for overhead, or administrative and facility costs, on research grants. The amount they charge depends largely on the cost of living in that location, as well as the sophistication of the university in gaming the system to get paid more for doing the same thing. As it turns out, the places that get the lion’s share of NIH research grants also have the highest overhead rates for research because they tend to be located in expensive cities and because they use their cartel power to get away with charging more.

Harvard has an overhead rate of 69%, meaning that for every dollar the NIH provides for research, taxpayers have to pay Harvard another 69 cents for overhead. Yale has an overhead rate of 67.5%. Caltech charges 68.4%.

Meanwhile, places that receive relatively little NIH funding have much lower overhead rates. The University of Mississippi only charges 46%. The University of North Dakota charges 41%.

Given economies of scale—where overhead expenses per study should be cheaper when those fixed costs are spread over a larger set of projects—it makes no sense for it to cost more to cover research infrastructure at places that get a lot of grants relative to those that get very few. It also makes no sense for taxpayers to be charged more to have almost all of the research concentrated in the most expensive places. There is no reason why scientists can’t do their work in Mississippi or North Dakota rather than Boston or Los Angeles.

The geographic distribution of government funding, including in the sciences, has important political implications. Most government agencies have had the good sense not to concentrate all of their spending in a handful of locations. Instead, they’ve spread out their spending, understanding that doing so helps control costs, builds confidence in government programs, and ensures representation of the diverse perspectives of our large country.

The NIH should take its cue from those agencies and do the same.

Jay P. Greene is a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, which has posted a data visualization providing information on the level of NIH funding in every congressional district in the country.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Jay P. Greene.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.