OPINION BERNIE SANDERS - The health care crisis no one is talking about

By Bernie Sanders OCTOBER 31, 2017

Excerpts:

The United States faces a major crisis in primary health care, and unless Congress acts immediately it is likely to become much worse.

Millions of Americans are at risk of losing their access to health care because Congress did not renew funding for the community health center program at the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30. Unless we renew funding immediately, 70 percent of funding will be cut, the doors of 2,800 community health centers will close, and 9 million patients will lose access to quality health care. That is unacceptable.

Our nation’s community health centers provide affordable, high-quality health care to more than 27 million people. This includes not only primary health care, but also dentistry, counseling, and low-cost prescription drugs. For the 13 million rural patients served, community health centers often are the only health care provider for hundreds of miles. And they provide good jobs in communities that need them the most.

Not only do we have to renew funding for the community health center program, we must also improve and expand the National Health Service Corps — the program that provides debt forgiveness for young doctors, nurses, dentists, mental health providers, and pharmacists who are prepared to work in our nation’s most underserved areas. Without debt forgiveness, it is very hard to get new doctors to choose primary care — an area of medicine that does not pay the big bucks. It is also difficult to attract medical professionals into the underserved areas of our country where they are needed the most.

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