On January 29, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) held a hearing titled, “Access to Care: Health Centers and Providers in Underserved Communities.” The hearing focused on community health centers, the National Health Service Corps and Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education programs, which all receive mandatory funding from the federal government that is set to expire at the end of this fiscal year (September 30).
Committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) recently introduced a bill that would extend funding for these programs for five years, and this hearing largely served as a forum to highlight the importance of passing that bipartisan legislation.
With federal funding for the highlighted programs expiring at the end of the fiscal (September), Senators Alexander and Murray took the opportunity to promote their recently introduced bill to provide a five-year funding extension to the affected programs. While community health centers generally receive bipartisan support, a clear process has yet to emerge for moving this or a similar bill into law before the September 30 deadline.