Hillary Clinton is announcing a commitment to expand investment in community health centers as part of her comprehensive agenda to expand access to health care and reduce health care costs. The proposal affirms Clinton’s career-long fight to achieve universal health care coverage for Americans.
As president, Clinton will double funding for primary care services at Federally Qualified Health Centers which deliver community-based care serving populations with limited access to health care. This means extending the current mandatory funding that was significantly expanded under the Affordable Care Act and expanding this funding by $40 billion over the next ten years. Clinton will also affirm her commitment to give Americans in every state the choice of a public-option insurance plan, something she has supported during this campaign and going back to her 2008 presidential campaign, as well as allowing individuals below the Medicare age to opt in to the program — a proposal she first cosponsored legislation on in 2001 as a senator — by providing the option to those 55 and older.
“We have more work to do to finish our long fight to provide universal, quality, affordable health care to everyone in America,” said Hillary Clinton. “Already, the Affordable Care Act has expanded coverage to 20 million Americans. As president, I will make sure Republicans never succeed in their attempts to strip away their care and that the remaining uninsured should be able to get the affordable coverage they need to stay healthy.”
Clinton’s plans will defend and expand upon the Affordable Care Act, which has already covered 20 million people nationwide, insuring more than 4.2 million Latinos and 2.3 million African Americans. The investments announced today in community health centers, which provide care for about 25 million people in the United States, more than half of whom are Hispanic or African Americans, will help break down the barriers minority communities face in accessing affordable health care.
This announcement reiterates and builds upon the plans Clinton previously released in her campaign to expand coverage and help make health care more affordable for the underinsured by capping out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs and providing a new tax credit of up to $5,000 for families facing high medical costs, among other provisions.