Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise today to introduce legislation with my colleague from Montana, Senator Tester, that would extend an important program to fund Teaching Health Centers, which support the health and well-being of families in rural and medically underserved communities. I am pleased that Senators Cochran, Manchin, Daines, Harris, and Boozman, have joined us as cosponsors. In the background of the health care debate, there is another crisis that looms. We are facing a severe shortage of doctors. By 2025, we will need more than 100,000 new primary care doctors to meet the growing demand for health care services across the Country. The shortage is especially critical in rural and underserved communities, which are often those that have been hit hardest by the opioid epidemic. The most significant shortages are in family medicine, general internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, and dentistry. These shortages have reached crisis levels in many places. In clinics and health centers in Aroostook County, Maine's northernmost county where I grew up, I hear stories about vacancies forcing Mainers to travel many miles simply to see a primary care doctor or dentist. For the past six years, one program, the Teaching Health Centers Graduate Medical Education Program, has worked to fill these gaps. This program helps to train medical residents in community-based settings, including low-income, underserved rural and urban neighborhoods.…”