Community Health Centers and the ACA
What are Community Health Centers?
They are federally funded health centers that provide primary, diagnostic, mental health care and dental services to all. They currently serve 20 million Americans in some 8,000 locations coast to coast and the ACA (with a little help from Bernie) is about to give CHCs a big boost- an 11 billion dollar boost to be exact.
http://www.nachc.org/default.cfm
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The Importance of Community Health Centers
Engines of Economic Activity and Job Creation
SOURCE: AP/Lynne Sladky
A man waits to see a doctor at a community health center in Miami, Florida.
By Ellen-Marie Whelan | August 9, 2010
Event: Health Centers as Economic Engines for Their Communities
Community health centers across our country have a 45-year history of providing care in underserved communities for everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. By design, these health centers are run by a board of directors comprised mostly of health center patients, ensuring the care delivered is tailored for the needs of the communities they serve.
Community health centers enjoy strong bipartisan support. President George W. Bush committing to double the number of patients seen by these centers during his presidency and succeeded, and President Barack Obama committing an additional $2 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to help these important community health centers expand their operations and build new centers.
Community health centers quickly demonstrated they could put additional federal investments to work, ramping up to provide care for an increased numbers of patients and expand their services. With the $2 billion Recovery Act investment, these centers were projected to provide care to an additional 2.9 million patients over the stimulus act’s two-year funding period, but in fact registered seeing over 2 million additional patients in the first year of funding—indicative of the demand for community health services in our country.
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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/08/community_health_centers.html