HHS awards $727 million to community health centers as part of new law

The Obama administration late last week announced it is awarding $727 million to community health centers around the nation to help them build new clinics and improve the safety net, The Washington Post reports. "Officials from the Health and Human Services Department said the $727 million to 143 clinics will bring more health care to 745,000 underserved patients as part of the health-care overhaul. The nation's 1,100 rural and urban health centers last year served 19 million people, about 40 percent of whom had no insurance" (Fears, 10/8).

Medical News Today lists the centers receiving the money and reports that HHS had already allocated $2 billion in stimulus funds for health center sites around America (10/10).

The Hill's Healthwatch blog: "There is no question that the economic downturn has made it harder for some Americans to get health care and important preventive services," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. "These funds from the Affordable Care Act will help get more people care in some communities where there have not been many options in the past" (Pecquet, 10/8).

The Boston Globe: "Eight community health centers in Massachusetts will receive a total of $43 million to construct new buildings or renovate their current homes, part of an infusion of federal dollars to support clinics devoted to preventive and primary care. … Community health centers care for people in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Massachusetts. They have been key players in providing primary care to people who were uninsured before the state passed its health coverage law in 2006, which mandates that most adults have health insurance and subsidizes the cost for people with incomes up to 300 percent of the poverty line" (Cooney, 10/9).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.