Physicians For Underserved Areas Act
PHYSICIANS FOR UNDERSERVED AREAS ACT -- (House of Representatives - December 06, 2006)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MORAN of Kansas. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Hostettler and Ranking Member Jackson-Lee and the two chairmen and ranking members of the full committee, who are here today, for their leadership and effort.
This has been a long time coming. The J-1 visa Conrad program has expired 6 months ago, and communities are waiting for the certainty of this legislation's passing, and I am grateful to the leadership of the committee as well as the House to see that this bill is on the floor today.
I came to Congress as a Member who wanted to do something about preserving and improving the way of life in rural America, and one of the things I quickly discovered was if there is going to be a future for rural communities we are going to have to have access to affordable medical care. If you want your community to have that future, you have got to have hospital doors that remain open, physicians in communities, home health care, nursing home care, and other professional health care providers that can meet the needs. Otherwise, our senior citizens that make up such a large portion of our population will reluctantly move away and young families will decide we can't take the risk of living in a community that does not allow us the opportunity to have our children treated with adequate medical facilities.
The J-1 visa program, though not solving all of the challenges we face in meeting the health care needs of Americans, is one step in that direction that needs to be there. It needs to be in place, and I am pleased that the committee has recognized its importance.
The physician shortage that has been mentioned is real. In fact, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that although a quarter of the population of our country lives in rural America, only 10 percent of the physicians serve that population. We have a tremendous gap. And the unique thing about this, as is with many what I would call rural health care issues, is it brings urban Members of Congress and rural Members of Congress together because our needs are so identical. We are so underserved that the core center of cities and the most unpopulated areas of the country face the same challenges: How do we meet the health care needs of Americans who choose to live where they live? Kansas has been able to recruit 66 physicians since 2002 when we developed our State program, and it has made a tremendous difference. Three communities, Rush County Memorial Hospital now has had three J-1 visa physicians, the only physicians in the county. The same thing with Greensburg, Kansas. For the last 10 years, no physician in the community but a J-1 visa, and those J-1 visa doctors have attracted three mid-level practitioners. And, finally, the most recent success in Kansas is a community health clinic, the United Methodist Mexican-American Ministries, where they just recruited a J-1 visa doctor from Peru who now can address the needs of many Hispanic members of that community in southwest Kansas. It is wonderful now to have a bilingual J-1 visa doctor.
Again, there are issues that we would love to work on to address the distribution of J-1 visa physicians, and I look forward to trying to meet that challenge with my colleagues from across the country. But this program is important. It saves lives. It is often the only health care opportunity that many Americans will ever receive, and the J-1 visa program is about good health and saving lives.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to be here today.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
http://thomas.loc.gov/