Advocacy Alert!

House bill threatens community health centers

The U.S. House Appropriations Committee plans to send a bill to the House floor that includes a $1.3 billion cut in funding for community health centers, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC). This comes just as Detroit/Wayne County and many other medically underserved areas have submitted requests to fund health center expansion, consistent with the goals of the Affordable Care Act.

NACHC has called for urgent action in support of community health center funding. Implications of the cuts include:

·         Overall health centers will lose the capacity to serve 11 million people. These cuts will not only stop expansion of health centers, but they will have a devastating impact on existing health centers.

·         127 health centers that have opened in the past year and a half through the Recovery Act or stimulus funds will have to close.

·         Over 3.3 million people who have received access to care in the past year and a half will no longer have it.

·         Health centers will be forced to lay off thousands of employees in urban and rural underserved areas.

·         This comes at a time when states have to cut $89 million in financial support to health centers due to their budgetary crisis.

Please call and email your Congress representative and ask them to oppose cuts to the Health Centers Program and maintain funding for health centers in Fiscal Year 2011.  The progress we've made in expanding the primary care access points is in peril. For more information visit www.nachc.com.