The AAMC joined a Sept. 5 letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urging Congress to extend critical health care programs that are facing significant funding cuts beginning on Oct. 1. They include the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Community Health Centers (CHCs), Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payments, and the National Health Service Corps (NHSC).
The letter notes, “Failure to renew these investments in a timely manner would reverberate throughout the health care system: eliminating coverage and access to care for millions, raising health care costs, and reversing decades of bipartisan progress. Sustaining and strengthening these investments and policies will have the opposite effect – building on the goals we all share in health care: better quality, increased access to care, and cost containment.” As such, the organizations urge Congress “to address these issues well before the September 30 deadline each program faces, and to extend each for at least a five year period.”