UPDATED: Sept. 22 at 2:40 p.m. ET
Despite concerns about pay-fors and some negative feedback from the industry, a key Senate panel has advanced a bill that aims to provide a financial boost to community health centers.
The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee moved the bill forward with a 14-7 vote on Thursday following a lengthy markup hearing. Committee Chair Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, co-sponsors the bill alongside Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas.
“Everyone in America understands that our health care system is broken and getting worse," Sanders said in a statement following the vote. "Despite spending twice as much per capita as any other nation, millions of Americans are unable to access the primary care and dental care they desperately need and we have a massive shortage of doctors, nurses, dentists and mental health professionals."
"With today’s passage of bipartisan legislation in the Senate HELP Committee, we are beginning to address that crisis," Sanders added.
The bill has garnered some pushback from lawmakers who are concerned about how it will pay for its key provisions. It has also drawn ire from hospital groups, which say funding cuts in the bill will instead harm them.
"Drafted outside the confines of regular order, this legislation fails to offer realistic solutions to pressing health care issues before Congress," Federation of American Hospitals CEO Chip Kahn said. "Instead, hospital cuts in the bill would jeopardize access to telehealth, primary care and other essential health care services, particularly for patients in rural and underserved areas."
Key Senate panels have reached a bipartisan deal on a bill that aims to bolster primary care.
The package would invest more than $26 billion into primary care programs as well as initiatives to grow the healthcare workforce. The bill is cosponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, and Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security.
The bill includes $5.8 billion in mandatory funding per year over the next three years for community health centers and sets aside $3 billion in capital to enable these facilities to expand dental care and mental health services.
In addition, it boosts funding for the National Health Service Corps to $950 million each year over the next three years, providing 2,100 scholarships and offering debt forgiveness to about 20,000 clinicians, including doctors, nurses and dentists, who work in vulnerable communities.
Sanders said in a statement that the bill came together after "over a month of very productive and thoughtful negotiations."
“Every major medical organization understands that our investment in primary care is woefully inadequate," Sanders said. "They understand that focusing on disease prevention and providing more Americans with a medical home instead of relying on expensive emergency rooms for primary care will not only save lives and human suffering, it will save money."
Within the funding set aside for community health centers, $245 million is allocated to helping these facilities expand their hours and $55 million is set to back school-based health programs. These health centers will also be newly required to offer nutrition services in the bill.
“Community health care centers are a vital player in addressing the health care challenges we face today," Marshall said. "This legislation expands American’s access to these health centers that provide excellent care like in-house mental health services, dental care, and nutrition coaching."
The bill also would invest $1.5 billion over the next five years into the Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education program, establishing 700 additional primary care residency slots. Those additional opportunities could lead to an additional 2,800 doctors by 2031.
It also invests $200 million to develop 2,000 more primary care doctors by 2032.
A further $1.2 billion investment will facilitate grants at community colleges and state universities to increase the number of people enrolled in accredited, two-year registered nursing programs. Should a school receive one of these grants, it must use it to grow class sizes to train additional nurses.
The grants would allow colleges and universities to train an additional 60,000 two-year nurses, according to the announcement.
The senators said the bill will be paid for by "combating the enormous waste, fraud and abuse in the healthcare system," according to the announcement. A markup of the bill is scheduled for Sept. 21.
The jury is still out on how the industry will respond to the bill. The Federation of American Hospitals, for instance, said the bill "misses the mark" and instead offers "a new slate of flawed policy proposals that threaten access to hospital care."
"Drafted outside the confines of regular order, this legislation fails to offer realistic solutions to pressing health care issues before Congress," Federation CEO Chip Kahn said. "Instead, hospital cuts in the bill would jeopardize access to telehealth, primary care and other essential health care services, particularly for patients in rural and underserved areas."