Ms. Baker’s employer, New Health Community Health Center, has laid off more than a third of its work force — 60 out of 175 — over the last two weeks, as revenues plummeted from fewer paid patient visits. “They’re good people.”The nation’s latticework of nonprofit community health centers was first established in the 1960s and now stretches across every state to provide about 29 million people with primary care, regardless of their ability to pay. Almost a quarter of the centers’ patients are uninsured, and almost 70 percent live in poverty. The centers are a crucial link in a fragmented American health care system that too often fails to reach into poor neighborhoods. When most states expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to cover many previously uninsured low-income adults, many community health centers saw their revenues improve, sometimes dramatically.

Source: New York Times April 04, 2020 14:07 UTC