Tell Congress to reauthorize the largest portion of funding for Community Health Centers

As you may know, Congress recently passed a Continuing Resolution to continue federal appropriations until December 8, 2017, avoiding a general government shutdown when the current federal fiscal year ends this Saturday. Unfortunately, they did not reauthorize the largest portion of funding for Community Health Centers like Care for the Homeless – and that funding authorization WILL expire on September 30 if Congress doesn’t act. (Congress also needs to reauthorize CHIP – the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and several other well-known programs, or they too can face a fiscal cliff.)

As a lead advocate and key contact for both NACHC and CHCANYS, Care for the Homeless has been very actively advocating for both authorization and full funding for community health centers. Our efforts have included contacting and visiting members of Congress, making phone calls, and writing and signing on to letters and e-mails supporting this effort.

With less than a week to go to meet the deadline, we are continuing our collaboration with NACHC, CHCANYS, NHCHC and others to get re-authorization. Will you help by calling on your members of Congress today? Please review these suggestions and call as soon as you can. A sample call in script follows the directions.

 

Advocates have been told through the Department of Health and Human Services that even if the September 30^th deadline is missed by a few days, health center funding won’t abruptly be suspended. Nonetheless, reauthorization must happen very soon including passage by both houses of Congress. There is no better time to advocate for this than right now.

1. Please call the NACHC “Health Center Message Board” number – 1-866-456-3949. First, listen to their short advocacy message.
2. The Health Center Message Board will then allow you to connect through them directly to your member’s office. If you don’t know how your member is, you can enter a zip code and be connected.
3. Calling through the Health Center Message Board helps NACHC in its advocacy effort, and gives NY State (CHCANYS) credit for generating the call.
4. Please call back to the hotline to contact your member of the House of Representatives and your two U.S. Senators. Every call is important, even though most of our Members do support funding (in fact, funding for health centers has always had bi-partisan and very robust support from both parties – but it still is in jeopardy of missing the deadline as other issues have taken the spotlight), to let them know how urgent this is to us.    

SAMPLE CALL-IN SCRIPT

Hi, my name is __________. I’m calling as a _____ (patient/Board Member, staff member, supporter) of the Care for the Homeless Health Centers in New York City. I’m calling because I’m concerned that Congress still hasn’t acted to fix the Community Health Center “Funding Cliff” by reauthorizing community health center funding by the September 30^th funding deadline.

Without action by September 30^th, the Health Center program will lose 70% of its federal funding. That would be a devastating cut. My health center and our community cannot afford to take this kind of hit. There are literally lives and jobs at stake.

(FOR CALLS TO Members of the House of Representatives add) I’m asking Representative _______ to support the CHIME Act, HR 3770, providing a 5-year extension to Community Health Center funding.

(FOR CALLS TO U.S. Senators add) I’m asking Senator __________ to take immediate action to fix Health Center funding. 

Thank you. I’m counting on Senator/Representative ____to act to fix the Health Center fiscal cliff before September 30.