With Clinics, Bush Leaves Compassionate Mark

Federal funding has doubled for community health centers

By Katherine Thompson, Newser Staff

Posted Dec 26, 2008 11:52 AM CST

(Newser) – One Bush project that President-elect Obama isn’t likely to overturn is the expansion of funding for nonprofit medical clinics in underserved areas. The push—unequalled since Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty—to provide accessible health care for the poor and uninsured was one of the campaign promises President Bush described as “compassionate conservatism,” the New York Times reports.

Though access to clinics is by no means universal, funding for the program more than doubled and the number of people reached jumped to 16 million. To proponents of universal health care, the clinics are merely a stopgap, but to their patients, they are a godsend. “You can go and feel like you’re being treated like a person,” one says.

[Images (2)]

[Quotes (1)]

David Thomas, left, gets his blood pressure checked by program coordinator Brenda Buchanan, right, at a Milwaukee clinic. (AP Photo)

Volunteer physician assistant Patti Koo, left, visits with patient at a free health clinic at the community center at the Pueblo De Palmas Colonia, Texas, July 7, 2007. (AP Photo)

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They’re an integral part of a health care system because they provide care for the low-income, for the newly arrived, and they take the pressure off of our hospital emergency rooms. - President Bush, while touring
an Omaha clinic last year

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With Clinics, Bush Leaves Compassionate Mark