Date: 2010-09-22
Speaker: TIM MURPHY (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Pennsylvania

Mr. Speaker. community health centers provide a neighborhood medical home that is both high quality and lower cost. They are more than just a doctors office. they are a place where a child can see a pediatrician and an adult can see an internist. You can get dental care. mental health services. or prenatal care. You can go there when you are getting a cold instead of running up big costs at an emergency room. The doctors. dentists. nurse practitioners. and other medical professionals are under one roof. and they coordinate your care. working as a team for your familys health in a onestop wellness center. and the costs per patient are far. far below the costs one would pay if you went to a hospital or private practice. That coordinated effort saves a lot of money through preventative care. keeping you up with immunizations and providing quality medical intervention when you need it at one of these 1.250 nonprofit community health centers. In our Nations $2.4 trillion health care system. the community health centers are credited with saving nearly $25 billion each year. Families save money and Medicaid saves money. On average. a person using a community health center saves $1.100 per year on health care costs. according to a recent study by George Washington University. Thats the good news. The sad news is that there is a serious shortage of health care providers at these centers. and no matter now great the center. if there are long delays because of the shortage. then health care delayed is health care denied. Health centers located in medically underserved urban or rural areas report a 27 percent shortage of dentists. a 26 percent shortage of OB/GYNs that could be providing prenatal care. and a 13 percent shortage of family physicians. The centers simply do not have enough money to hire the additional staff required to cover the growing patient needs. but there is an answer. Many health professionals. especially parttime workers or highly qualified. semiretired medical providers are willing and able. but not allowed to do so. Thats right. They want to volunteer their time. but they cannot. They cannot because the centers are not able to cover the costs of medical liability insurance for the doctors and nurses. Medical liability insurance can cost tens of thousands of dollars. and. in some cases. well over $100.000 per year per doctor. and the clinics simply cannot cover that expense. Heres why: Practitioners employed by the community health centers are covered by the Federal Torts Claim Act. which extends Federal liability protection to those volunteer doctors. Oddly enough. the opposite applies at free clinics. where volunteers are covered by the FTCA. while those who are employed at free clinics are not covered. The Congressional Budget Office said that medical liability insurance costs pose a "significant barrier" for many providers who otherwise would be eager to volunteer at health centers. This bill. H.R. 1745. fixes this disparity and opens the door for volunteer providers at clinics all over America. This bill. which I introduced with Representative GENE GREEN. will eliminate the barriers for millions of patients seeking care in these neighborhood health care homes and will allow thousands of practitioners to volunteer their expertise for highquality. lowcost patient care. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost of this bill could be as little as $5 million a year for 5 years. and. in return. the clinics receive hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free health care services for those living in underserved communities. And because this funding is part of the health centers programs annual appropriations. this funding is not a scored cost. The dedicated health center fund means that the slight additional cost to the FTCA program will require no new appropriations. I repeat: The slight additional cost will require no new annual appropriations. I am grateful for the support of my colleaguesRepresentative GENE