Health Law Gives a Boost to Civil Rights
By Noam N. Levey, reporting from West Memphis, Ark
Dr. Susan Ward-Jones observed something remarkable not long after the East Arkansas Family Health Center opened a new clinic in this small city by the Mississippi River.
“People used to come in unkempt, sloppily dressed. They look better now,” said Ward-Jones, the clinic’s director. “I think people have a new pride in themselves. Maybe they see we’re doing better and they say, I’ll try to do better, too.’ ”
With a two-story glass atrium and soaring brushed metal portico, the clinic — whose patients are mostly poor and African American — has nearly twice as many exam rooms as the health center’s old location in a cramped storefront down the road. Nine dental suites, a pharmacy and a state-of-the-art demonstration kitchen branch off the sundappled atrium. A shaded exercise track winds through a stand of tall oaks out back. It opened in 2014, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, which also helped thousands of the clinic’s patients get health insurance.
A decade after President Obama signed what became known as Obamacare, health centers such as this one and the coverage that the health law gives boost to civil rights.
