Members push bipartisan effort to fund community health centers

U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) led a bipartisan group of his colleagues in asking Senate leadership to immediately reauthorize community health center funding and ensure health care access for center patrons and business stability for center staffs.

“For more than fifty years, community health centers have experienced strong bipartisan support. In fact, twenty bipartisan senators cosponsor legislation which reauthorizes funding not only for community health centers but also for the National Health Service Corps,” according to a Feb. 5 letter also spearheaded by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and sent to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY).

In all, 67 senators signed the letter. Joining Blunt were U.S. Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Steve Daines (R-MT), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Cory Gardner (R-CO), John Hoeven (R-ND), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rob Portman (R-OH), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Roger Wicker (R-MS).

The lawmakers said they were concerned that community health centers across America would lose 70 percent of their funding if the Community Health Center Fund (CHCF) isn’t quickly extended. The fund, established under the Affordable Care Act, expired on Sept. 30, 2017, according to Sen. Portman’s office. The CHCF funds the nation’s more than 10,000 community health center sites, which provide affordable care for more than 27 million patients, among them 330,000 military veterans and 8 million children.

Without a CHCF funding extension, an estimated 2,800 sites would close, 50,000 jobs would be lost, and 9 million Americans would go without access to health care, the senators wrote.

According to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department Health Resources and Services Administration, the community-based centers are patient-directed and draw from the National Health Service Corps for physician staff, points that the senators took up in their letter.

Community health centers “operate as small businesses and require a level of predictability to operate and respond to the needs of their communities,” according to the letter. “Since the expiration of the CHCF, community health centers have not been able to adequately plan for everything from staffing needs to securing loans for capital projects.”

Additionally, the expiration of the National Health Service Corps and Teaching Health Centers Graduate Medical Education program also potentially hampers the ability of these health centers to meet their workforce needs, the senators wrote.