Pay Up to $110,000 Urged for Government Scientists

Top Administration health officials have drafted a plan to set up a Senior Biomedical Research Service that would pay the government’s most eminent scientists up to $110,000 a year, said Thomas R. Burke, chief of staff at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The figure is $32,000 higher than salaries at top levels of the Senior Executive Service, made up of the government’s senior managers, and $10,000 more than the salary of Cabinet secretaries.

The extraordinary proposal is necessary to prevent a biomedical “brain drain” to business and academia, said John J. Coogan, head of the committee responsible for the proposal. The top figure is 66% of the average earned by medical school clinical department chairmen, he said.

The $100,000 salary barrier already has been scaled by the highest medical officials in the Veterans Administration, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and some Federal Reserve Board officials, Burke and the General Accounting Office said.

The proposal would avoid government-wide pay caps by keeping base pay between $53,830 and $77,500 but making individuals eligible for supplemental pay of up to $25,000 for scientific accomplishments, and up to $10,000 for administrative responsibilities.

The proposal is an outgrowth of a broad effort by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to revitalize the commissioned corps of the Public Health Service, a uniformed service that becomes part of the Navy in wartime, and save it from elimination by the Office of Management and Budget.

Many of the top biomedical researchers in the government are members of the commissioned corps. Pay, allowances and bonuses for senior members of the corps are higher than in the civil service, although they vary.

The proposed Senior Biomedical Research Service would allow top members of the corps to transfer into the Civil Service without losing money. The service would be competitive and accept only about the top 1,100 biomedical researchers and biomedical administrators in the Public Health Service.

The proposal is being circulated for comment by Aug. 3. Its costs are supposed to be nominal, Burke said, on the theory that corps members already make comparable salaries.

The commissioned corps revitalization and pay issues are intertwined because, when Koop attempted this year to enforce longstanding corps regulations, such as wearing uniforms, rotation of duty, and mandatory retirement after 30 years, National Institutes of Health officials complained vociferously.

Koop said OMB tried to kill the commissioned corps because it was no longer living up to its mission of being a flexible, mobile, expert corps able to respond to public health disasters. One of its principal tasks is to provide health care on Indian reservations.

Koop fought to save the corps, he said, because it is “an asset to the American people.” But when notices of mandatory retirement were sent to 34 top scientists at NIH, Koop’s revitalization effort came under heavy fire.

Koop said he never intended to force out any of NIH’s world-renowned researchers.

The proposed Senior Biomedical Research Service would make it possible for NIH to retain its best researchers while the commissioned corps enforced its rotation and retirement rules.