Spotlight Event

The House is currently debating the FY2011 Continuing Resolution (HR 1) that includes $1.3 BILLION

in cuts to Health Center funding and is scheduled to vote on this bill. This is the last chance you will have to weigh in on this bill in the House.

As this bill comes to a vote we need you to CALL your Representative and ask them to:

1)      Go to the floor and talk about their support for health centers

 AND

2)      To continue to oppose Health Center funding cuts and Vote AGAINST the Continuing Resolution

While this bill is being debated the BEST way to demonstrate the broad support for Health Centers is for as many Representatives as possible to speak about the value and importance of Health Centers from the House floor. So far only a very few Representatives have mentioned Health Centers in their statements so we need you to urge YOUR Representative to talk about why cutting health Center funding is the wrong thing to do for their constituents and for the country!

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Just a reminder of what will $1.3 Billion in cuts the Health Centers would mean:

• The devastating $1.3 billion cut proposed by the House Appropriations Committee will mean that overall health centers will lose the capacity to serve 11 million patients. Within months, 127 new health centers that have opened in the last year and a half thanks to Recovery Act or stimulus funds will have to CLOSE THEIR DOORS. Well over 3.3 million patients who have received access to care in the last year and a half under the Recovery Act or stimulus New Access Point and Increased Demand for Services funding will LOSE ACCESS to care within months as a result of this cut.This cut will not only halt the expansion of the cost-effective, high quality and patient-directed health center model of care, it will have real, devastating and virtually immediate impacts on existing health centers and the communities and patients they serve – pregnant women, children, those without health insurance due to the recession and recent unemployment and people with HIV/AIDS to name a few – will literally be left with nowhere to turn.Health centers will also be forced to lay off thousands of employees in the rural and urban underserved communities where they are located.This proposed cut comes at a time when states have to cut $89 million in financial support to health centers due to their budgetary crises.
• This cut MUST be rejected.