What Would $600 Million Do for Primary Care?
February 4th, 2009 by Candice Chen (email author)The current House Stimulus Package specifies $600 million dollars for strengthening primary care. The funds are specifically targeted for:
- Training primary care nurses, physicians, and dentists under Title VII and VIII of the Public Health Service Act.
- The provision of health care personnel under the National Health Service Corps.
- The patient navigator program under Title III of the PHS Act.
The Senate version maintains the $600 million for primary care training without the specificity of where the funds will be directed.
What would $600 million do for primary care?
Based on FY08 appropriation levels for each of the specified House programs, distributing the stimulus funds based on the current distribution of appropriations and assuming a 2 year distribution of stimulus funding, the package would nearly DOUBLE each programs annual funding if baseline appropriations are maintained at the FY08 funding level.
The stimulus is a start and an opportunity to build these into the robust programs they need to be in order to truly address the problems of primary care, underserved areas, and health care disparities that are persistent and growing problems in the US health care system.