Campaign Action
It's been 37 days since the Republican Congress let several critical health programs lapse. The Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers about 9 million children, is one of them. But one that gets less attention is the Community Health Center Fund, which provides 70 percent of the funding for the nation's 2,800 community health centers—that's 50,000 jobs, and health care to 25 million Americans.
States are freaking out over the potential loss of children's health funding. This is federal money that they must have to match the funding they can provide in order to meet the need. Health centers are in the same boat, trying to work out what services they'll have to cut in order to be able to keep their doors open.
"We can go for three more months and then after that we would have to start to curtail (services) immediately," said Dr. Van Breeding, director of clinical affairs for Mountain Comprehensive Health Corp., a community health center network based in Whitesburg, Ky., which serves 40,000 patients a year. […]
Breeding estimated the loss of those services and sites would result in a 25% drop in its patient population, which would result in about 50,000 fewer office visits a year. If money from the fund did not arrive before Mountain exhausted its cash reserve, Breeding estimated as many as 100 jobs could be cut out of a workforce of 300 employees. […]
In Louisiana, community health centers throughout the state have been reluctant to begin new programs, according to Tiffany Netters, director of health policy and government affairs for the Louisiana Primary Care Association, which represents 34 federally funded community health centers operating 240 sites for nearly 385,000 patients annually. […]
"It's going to have major impact on the health of our community as well as the healthcare that they are provided through our clinicians," Netters said.
House Republicans did pass a bill last week that they say funds both CHIP and CHCF, a bill that's a total sham. It makes unacceptable cuts, taking $900 million in prevention grants to states through a program in the Affordable Care Act and adding Medicare cuts for higher-income enrollees.
These poison pills complicate the bill's progress in the Senate, where they have their own version of the bill that doesn't have these destructive offsets and aren't trying to sabotage Obamacare and Medicare. Now the House and Senate are going to have to fight this out, and that's going to delay funding for both of these critical programs. It's going to jeopardize care to more than 30 million people—children and adults—all over the country.
And House Republicans did that on purpose.