Frank Pallone: “This is true in the health reform, that there's a lot more money for community-based health care clinics, but we also…”

“This is true in the health reform, that there's a lot more money for community-based health care clinics, but we also have that in the stimulus, the Recovery Act. Actually, I had two clinics that were funded under the Recovery Act that had not received Federal funds before. And just to give you an idea of what they did, one of them is in my hometown of Long Branch. They coordinated with the emergency room at Monmouth Medical Center so that every time someone comes to the emergency room who's eligible for the community health center--because they probably, many of them are uncompensated, have no insurance--now they go back and coordinate so that that person doesn't come back to the emergency room again--which, of course, is a tremendous expense--and instead goes to the community health center where they get primary care. So that is an example of where some Federal dollars that are going to community health centers are now being used to make it so that people don't have to go to the emergency room because they're getting the primary care in the clinic for probably maybe a hundredth of the cost of an emergency room.”