The New Health Dialogue

Credit: Center for American Progress

During the legislative battle over health reform, we told you over and over again about the Cost of Doing Nothing (read the paper here). Now, we can tell you about the Benefits of Doing Something.

We already know community health centers, strengthened by both last year's stimulus package and the health reform law, are good for keeping people healthy. A new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) by Ellen-Marie Whelan says it can also help heal the economy.

The report, entitled "The Importance of Community Health Centers: Engines of Economic Activity and Job Creation," explains both the health benefits of community health centers (which we’ve discussed here and here and here), and their role as highly effective, targeted, stimulus spending.

Growth in the community health center network, facilitated by $2 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and an additional $11 billion dollars offered by the Affordable Care Act, targets federal money specifically at the areas most devastated by the ‘Great Recession’ -- rural and inner-city communities. These areas have borne the greatest burdens of both unemployment and uninsurance.

Required to have patient-majority boards, the federal community health centers are tightly linked to their communities and drive significant growth in their local economies. While the initial $13 billion in new spending is certainly no small change, it is dwarfed by CAP’s projections on the money’s total ripple impact on the economy:

...All of this new funding will generate $53.7 billion in economic activity for some of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the country over the next five years, with $33.5 billion of this total attributable to the increased investments via the Affordable Care Act.

The centers not only lead to significant hiring of health professionals and ancillary support staff, but provide additional support to local economies through the purchasing of necessary goods and services. For the poor communities in which these health centers are built, they can act as fundamental economic drivers the same way large hospital groups do in major metropolitan centers.

The ACA’s expansion of health insurance will create a huge demand for the type of primary services provided by community health centers. Coupled with the ripple-effect support of local economies, this program is a crucial step towards shoring up our national infrastructure -- both health and otherwise -- going forwards.