Here's your daily reminder that community health centers haven't been funded for 125 days and somewhere around 27 million people may soon have no more access to health care. That includes tens of thousands in North Carolina.
Last fall, Kim Wagenaar started to plan how she would close the health clinic she runs in rural North Carolina—when Congress let funding lapse for thousands of centers like hers.
The Cabarrus Rowan Community Health Center offers primary care services to patients, largely uninsured and unable to afford visits elsewhere. Its four buildings, scattered across suburban Charlotte and more rural areas to the north, do not suffer from low demand. They saw more than 8,000 patients last year alone.
“I’m usually a very optimistic person,” Wagenaar says. “I always feel like the community health centers have great support. But I’ll be honest, this is the first time I’m not 100 percent sure this will get fixed.” […]
Wagenaar estimates that losing federal funding would reduce their budget by 52 percent — and that would force the clinic to make some tough decisions.
“I’ve had these contingency plans in place and ready since October [when funding lapsed],” she says. “We’re working with our lawyer to start crafting a reduction in workforce plan so that I can make sure employees get an appropriate amount of notice.”
She’s applying for other grants too, as a safeguard, but that wouldn’t be enough to keep the clinic afloat.
“We’ll probably at minimum have to close two sites, one in each county we serve,” she says. “We’re still waiting on other grants we applied for. Worst case, we’d close three of our four sites and leave Rowan County entirely.”
But don't worry, House Republicans say. They can come up with $7.4 billion for two years of community health center funding. It just means "figuring out how to pay for it." Seriously. A little over a month after they pass a fucking $1.5 trillion tax giveaway, punching a massive hole in the deficit, and while they're talking about something around $20 billion for Trump's stupid border wall, they want to rob something else for a tiny $7.4 billion to save lives.
Jam the phone lines of House and Senate Republicans. Call (202) 224-3121, and tell them to stop holding people's health care hostage.