Republicans made funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program lapse, and allowed it languish for 114 days, deliberately using it as leverage for their negotiating on immigration and on government funding. Those 9 million kids and women in the program were taken hostage, no other way around it.
So all those Republicans who are so sanctimoniously touting the six-year funding they voted for in the spending continuing resolution? Shut. The. Hell. Up. Looking at you, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH).
Republicans really can't claim any credit on this while they're still holding community health centers hostage. Because CHC funding, along with a few other small but critical health programs, lapsed along with CHIP. The Community Health Center Fund provides 70 percent of the funding for the nation's 2,800 community health centers—that's 50,000 jobs, and health care to 27 million Americans. Republicans finally got tired of being beat up over the fact that they were holding sick children hostage and let them go. That compassion hasn't extended further, much to the surprise of the providers. This has always been a non-controversial, well-supported program.
The results of funding loss are just as destructive for this population as for the CHIP kids.
I am genuinely shocked at how hard it has been to get community health center funding extended," Eliot Fishman, senior director of health policy at Families USA, told me. "That has been completely uncontroversial for very good reason for a long time." […]
[National Association of Community Health Centers] Senior Vice President Dan Hawkins said he's "very disappointed" and warned that some of the health centers his group represents have started reducing services — including opioid treatment and prenatal care — because of the uncertainty they face.
"While we have supported and are very pleased that CHIP relief is included, the failure to do the same for health centers leaves them increasingly anxious that many more will face a loss of clinical health professionals, who are seeking other more stable work options, and some are facing closure of their clinic facilities because they cannot sign longer-term lease agreements," Hawkins said. "This will only get worse if relief is not forthcoming very soon."
A deadly flu epidemic. A just as deadly and ongoing opioid epidemic. And a front-line public health provider has been left to languish because Republicans have other priorities—tax cuts for the super-rich and racist immigration policies.
Jam the phone lines of House and Senate Republicans. Call (202) 224-3121, and tell them to stop holding people's health care hostage.