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Dear Fellow Vermonter,
In a very divided Congress, where it is extremely difficult to get anything done, I wanted to give you some good news about progress being made on health care reform.
As most Vermonters know, our current health care system is broken and dysfunctional. Despite spending almost twice as much per capita as any other country, an unsustainable $13,000 per year, 85 million Americans are either uninsured or underinsured; over 60,000 die each year because they can’t get to a doctor when they need to; we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs; and our life expectancy, already far lower than other developed countries, is getting lower.
As broken as our overall health care system is, the situation with regard to primary health care is even worse. All across this country, millions of Americans do not have access to affordable, decent-quality primary care, dental care, mental health counseling, or low-cost prescription drugs. Even people with good insurance often have to wait months for a medical appointment. In the richest country on Earth, that is unacceptable.
Furthermore, despite the enormous amount of money we spend on health care, we have a massive shortage of doctors, nurses, dentists, and mental health providers — shortages which are getting worse every year.
That is why, as Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, I am fighting to pass the Bipartisan Primary Care and Health Workforce Act. This legislation, which I have introduced with Republican Senator Roger Marshall from Kansas, would improve the woefully inadequate primary care system in this country and greatly expand the health care workforce. The good news is that this bill recently passed the HELP Committee by a vote of 14-7 with strong bipartisan support. Now, it's up to the full Senate to take up this important bill.
As most Vermonters know, I believe that health care is a human right and should be guaranteed to every man, woman, and child in our country. This legislation, therefore, is far more modest than I would have liked it to be. But, if it is passed into law, it would go a long way toward making primary health care in America more affordable and more accessible. By greatly expanding the number of community health centers it would provide a medical home for millions of Americans who do not have one today. It would also greatly increase the number of doctors and nurses that we desperately need.
By investing in primary health care, disease prevention, and good nutrition, this legislation would also save the health care system substantial sums of money. It is totally insane that many Americans end up in emergency rooms for primary care, a far more expensive setting than a community health center. There is a reason why most developed counties spend twice as much as we do on primary care, but end up spending far less on health care per capita overall. Keeping people healthy, and allowing them to get to a doctor when they need to, is not only good health care but good economics. According to the Director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University, the funding that we have included in this bill for community health centers alone will save the federal government more than $40 billion over the next three years.
Here's some of what this legislation would do:
- Increase mandatory funding for Federally Qualified Community Health Centers from $4 billion a year to $5.8 billion a year for three years. This will enable more Americans to receive not only high-quality primary care, but also dental care, mental health care, and low-cost prescription drugs.
- Greatly increases the number of dental operatories at community health centers so that more Americans can get the dental care they need. The new funding will also be used to provide space for additional mental health counselors — among other uses.
- Triples funding for the National Health Service Corps from $310 million to $950 million per year over the next three years to provide 2,100 scholarships and debt forgiveness for some 20,000 doctors, nurses, dentists, mental health providers, and other health care professionals who commit to working in our nation’s most underserved areas.
- More than doubles funding for Teaching Health Centers — going from $126 million a year to $300 million a year for the next 5 years. These centers are extraordinarily important because they allow medical school graduates to do their residencies in community health centers instead of just large teaching hospitals. If we want more doctors, dentists, and nurses to practice in rural areas and underserved areas, this is an important way to do it.
- Increases the number of nurses in America by addressing the shortage of nurse educators. In 2021, U.S. nursing schools turned away over 91,000 qualified applications because of a lack of qualified faculty and inadequate physical infrastructure.
- In order to improve disease prevention, health centers will be newly required to provide nutrition services.
Will this legislation solve all of the crises in our health care system? Absolutely not. But it will take us a major step forward in increasing access and lowering costs. I intend to do all that I can to see that it is passed.
Sincerely,
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