TW: Have been searching for some positive W. Bush stories, certainly challenging but here is one. Bush expanded greatly funding for health clinics in the U.S. that serve low-income patients. The clinics enjoy bi-partisan support, would assume Obama will support and expand as well, as they expand health care for underserved Americans while reducing the need for those patients to use high cost emergency care instead. So kudos to W. on this one.
From NYT:
"Although the number of uninsured and the cost of coverage have ballooned under his watch, President George W. Bush leaves office with a health care legacy in bricks and mortar: he has doubled U.S. governemnt financing for community health centers, enabling the creation or expansion of 1,297 clinics in medically underserved areas.
For those in poor urban neighborhoods and isolated rural areas, including Indian reservations, the clinics are often the only dependable providers of basic services like prenatal care, childhood immunizations, asthma treatments, cancer screenings and tests for sexually transmitted diseases.
As a crucial component of the health safety net, they are lauded as a cost-effective alternative to hospital emergency rooms, where the uninsured and underinsured often seek care...
Democrats on Capitol Hill are proposing even more significant increases, making the centers a likely feature of any health care deal struck by Congress and the Obama administration...
Willie Mai Ridley, a 68-year-old beautician, said she would have sought care for her bronchitis in a hospital emergency room were it not for the new clinic. Instead, she took a short drive, waited 15 minutes without an appointment and left without paying a dime; the clinic would bill her later for her Medicare co-payment of $18.88.
Ridley said she appreciated both the dignity and the affordability of her care. "This place is really very, very important to me," she said, "because you can go and feel like you're being treated like a person and get the same medical care you would get somewhere else and have to pay $200 to $300."
As governor of Texas, Bush came to admire the missionary zeal and cost-efficiency of the not-for-profit community health centers, which qualify for federal operating grants by being located in designated underserved areas and treating patients regardless of their ability to pay. He pledged support for the program while campaigning for president in 2000 on a platform of "compassionate conservatism..."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/26/healthscience/26clinics.php
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