Community Health Centers have reduced mortality rates of older Americans at significantly lower cost than Medicare

Federally-funded Community Health Centers (CHCs) today provide primary care and medication on a sliding pay scale to more than 20 million Americans. In new research, Martha Bailey and Andrew Goodman-Bacon show CHCs had large effects on health at relatively modest costs. The establishment of this program in the 1960s resulted in sharp and persistent reductions in age-adjusted mortality rates–effects concentrated among the most disadvantaged Americans. Reductions in mortality rates through this expansion cost one third to one eighth what the same mortality reduction cost through Medicare. These findings bode well for the current expansion of the CHC program under the Affordable Care Act.