It's been 124 days since the Republican congress decided to take health care hostage, and allowed funding for community health centers and the Children's Health Insurance Program to lapse. While CHIP funding was finally released, the centers where so many of them get care are starting to be shuttered.
Lolita Lopez was forced to close one branch of the Delaware-based Westside Family Healthcare network she runs, and now she’s worried she’ll have to shut more unless Congress gets its act together. […]
The lack of permanent funding has affected the way centers handle critical issues, such as treating the opioid epidemic, and how they recruit and retain staff.
“We’re on day-to-day mode trying to keep our heads above water, let alone do anything strategically or innovative,” said Lopez, the chief executive officer of Westside, which handles more than 100,000 patient visits each year. […]
Despite the uncertainty, facilities like the Joseph P. Addabbo Family Health Center in New York continue to provide medical services. By 9 a.m. on Wednesday, the waiting room at the main branch in the Far Rockaway section of Queens was bustling with visitors there to access everything from dental care to an on-site pharmacy. […]
“We have lost some providers who say, ‘You know what? I love this community, I love working with Addabbo, but every day we read the paper Congress is silent on this 70 percent,” said CEO Marjorie Hill. “I am very worried that Congress will do nothing, that the president will do nothing, and that we will be faced with making—I don’t want to overstate—but catastrophic decisions.”
It's catastrophic when you're talking about actual life and death, which this is. But they're the lives that the "pro-life" Republicans just don't care about.
Jam the phone lines of House and Senate Republicans. Call (202) 224-3121, and tell them to stop holding people's health care hostage.