Contact: Ernie Blazar 202.224.7627 Shana Stribling 202.224.0309
Tuesday, March 13, 2001

WASHINGTON - Senator Kit Bond, a longtime proponent of health centers - community clinics that serve people in poor and medically-under served areas who would not otherwise have access to health care services - today introduced the “Building Better Health Centers Act,” a bill that would make it easier for the centers to add to or improve their facilities to serve more people.

“Many of our health centers are shackled to slowly deteriorating facilities, which will sap their ability to provide care to uninsured families and individuals,” Bond said. “The solution is to let them use federal grant dollars to make capital improvements, a freedom they do not now have under current law.”

Existing law allows federal grant dollars to health centers to be used for the salaries of doctors and nurses, for supplies, and for other operational costs. But federal grants to health centers cannot be used for one of the most critical and expensive needs a health center, or any business or nonprofit organization ever faces, that of capital improvements. The Bond legislation changes the law to allow grant dollars to be used for new construction or renovation of health center facilities.

Many health care experts believe that Americans’ lack of access to basic health services is our single most pressing health care problem. 43 million Americans do not have health insurance and have difficulty finding and using health care services because of their inability to pay. Others who have health insurance, including many in rural areas, do not have access to a primary care provider. Our nation’s 3,000 health centers - including community health centers, migrant health centers, homeless health centers, and public housing health centers - fill the gap by providing primary care services to nearly 12 million Americans, including minorities, farm workers and the homeless, each year. The care they provide has been repeatedly shown by studies to be high-quality and cost-effective.

“If a crumbling building constantly in need of repair is soaking up money and reducing the number of patients a health center can care for, the federal government should be allowed to help with a needed renovation. That’s just common-sense,” Bond said.