I recently met someone who follows my blog — one of the benefits I treasure. She’d come to the District for a meeting of the National Association of Community Health Centers. I learned a lot about this important piece of our federally-subsidized healthcare system.
I could see right off ways that they and the low-income people they serve are threatened now. But Terri told me about another that’s more than a threat.
Federally Qualified Health Centers
Terri serves as the strategist and advocate for a Southern California network of Federally Qualified Heath Centers — outpatient clinics that have met a set of requirements and receive grants from a Health and Human Services Department agency.
The FQHCs must, among other things. provide specific healthcare services — primary, preventive and emergency, plus education so that patients with diabetes and chronic kidney disease can monitor and control their conditions.
They must serve an otherwise under-served area or under-served people elsewhere. And they must use income and family size as the basis for their fees. So people with no income can get care, even if not enrolled or eligible for Medicaid.
A number of clinics provide additional services, e.g., dental care, mental health and/or substance abuse treatment. The clinic where Terri is based does all this and more.
It has social workers, for example, who link patients to sources of help, according to their individual needs, including navigating them through online enrollment in Medicaid.
The clinic goes beyond its diabetes management requirement by giving its diabetic patients cellphones that read their blood sugar levels and relay them to the clinic.
Terri, her colleagues and counterparts across the country are worried about how they will continue to operate — and what will happen to the low-income they serve if they can’t.
Her network receives some donations. But like all FQHCs, it depends largely on the HHS grants and partial cost reimbursements for patients enrolled in Medicaid.
Raid on Medicaid Still a Threat
California jumped at the chance to expand its Medicaid program when the Affordable Care Act became effective. The clinic Terri works in experienced a large influx of newly-eligible people with untreated conditions, e.g., diabetes, high blood pressure, oral diseases, mental health problems.
Congressional Republicans haven’t block-granted Medicaid or the similarly cost-shifting per capita alternative.
But the Affordable Care Act assured states that the federal government would reimburse 90% of care costs for their newly-eligible enrollees from 2020 on forward — the last phase in the incentive pay scheme.
What with Trump now trying to cut a deal with far right-wing members of the House, one might reasonably expect the product to end this level of funding like the failed repeal-replace bill. All expansion states, including California would face some tough choices then.
Federal Grants in Two-Part Jeopardy
The legislation that authorizes the federal government to award the FQHC grants will expire at the end of September. Without the grants, the health centers will collectively lose about 70% of their federal funding.
So a must-do for Congress is a straightforward extension, like the one included in the same law that kept the Children’s Health Insurance Program alive. Given the lack of hearings, other preoccupations and usual long summer break, simply kicking the expiration deadline forward is the only way to avert a for-sure funding loss.
But that would only give HHS authority to spend as much money as Congress chooses — and the President agrees to. Trump’s budget plan would cut the HHS budget by 17.9% — $15.1 billion less than it’s getting now. We don’t know the details, but we shouldn’t, I think, rule out anything.
Even if Congress won’t go along with such radical spending cuts (a likely response), the Budget Control Act’s cap on spending for non-defense programs will kick in again, after the latest two-year halt.
What this means it that Congress will have to cut spending on these programs by $2.9 billion. So the size and/or number of the FQHC grants are at risk — unless Congress decides to again defer or altogether eliminate the caps.
Immigrant Roundups and Healthcare Needs
The clinic where Terri is based is in a community where many immigrants live, including some unknown number without the documents authorizing them to live and work in this country.
Even immigrants here legally generally can’t qualify for Medicaid for the first five years, though they can receive Medicaid-financed emergency services.
California, as well as some other states provides a few others, regardless of immigration status. But as the Los Angeles Times reports, the community health care centers “treat all comers.”
We all know how federal immigration enforcement authorities have aggressively ramped up raids aimed at deportation. They’re active in the clinic’s community, where local authorities have partnered with them.
The agents have started patrolling side roads, including one leading to the clinic. Staff have witnessed a large drop off in immigrants seeking care.
One day an agent showed up in the building, with a warrant for something (not somebody). He opened the door to the waiting room. Patients fled, dragging children by the hands. What’s going to happen to them and their kids now that fear will keep them away?
These aren’t the only threats to the health of low-income people. The unremitting efforts to defund Planned Parenthood clinics put them at high-risk too, notwithstanding the anti-choice Congress members’ and supporters claim that clinics like Terri’s can fill the gap.
May have more to say about this than I already have.