[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 33 (Thursday, March 17, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H1678]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MURPHY. Madam Speaker, let me talk about something good for 
America. Community health centers offer primary and preventive health 
care services to everyone, including low-income, underinsured and 
uninsured families. While low-income individuals have access to 
Medicaid and the elderly and the disabled have access to Medicare, 
uninsured and underinsured families often delay seeing a doctor or turn 
to emergency departments where treatment is several times more 
expensive.
  Community health centers, however, provide comprehensive and 
preventive care that adjusts charges for patient care according to 
family income. The Federal Government spends over $23 billion a year to 
offset losses incurred by hospitals for patients unable to pay their 
bills, and the Department of Health and Human Services tell us that 
medical care at community health centers cost only about $1.30 per pay 
per patient served. In fact, medical care at community health centers 
is around $250 less than the average annual expenditure for an office-
based medical provider.
  In short, community health centers offer an affordable source of 
quality health care, but the problem is we need more of them. The 
President has proposed a $304 million increase for community health 
center programs to create 1,200 new or expanded sites to serve an 
additional 6.1 million people by next year. In order to meet that goal, 
the centers must double their workforce by adding double the clinicians 
by 2006. Hiring that many doctors would be costly, but encouraging more 
to volunteer would help to meet this need. While many physicians are 
willing to volunteer their services at these centers, they often 
hesitate due to the high cost of medical liability insurance. As a 
result, there are too few volunteer physicians to meet our health care 
needs.
  By comparison, volunteer physicians at free health clinics and paid 
physicians at community health centers already receive comprehensive 
medical liability coverage under the Federal Tort Claims Act, or FTCA.
  Accordingly, I am introducing the Community Health Center Volunteer 
Physician Protection Act of 2005 to extend the medical liability 
protections of FTCA to volunteer physicians at community health 
centers. These protections are necessary to ensure that the centers can 
continue to play an important role in lowering our Nation's health care 
costs and meeting the needs for affordable and access quality health 
care. The Community Health Center Volunteer Physician Protection Act of 
2005 is supported by the National Association of Community Health 
Centers, the American Medical Association and the American Osteopathic 
Association. I would encourage my colleagues to cosponsor this 
important piece of legislation to ensure access to health care for 
those who need it most.




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