ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A day after he proposed a $42 billion plan to help the poor move into the middle class, George W. Bush Wednesday offered a five-year, $4.3 billion proposal to expand health care in underserved and remote areas.
The cornerstone is a $3.6 billion proposal to add 1,200 community and migrant health centers across the country, raising the total to 4,200. Bush also wants to overhaul the National Health Services Corps so it can better place health-care providers in areas where there is a shortage.In addition, his "Strengthening the Health Care Safety Net" proposal would establish a "Healthy Communities Innovation Fund." That would provide $500 million in grants over five years so communities can establish pilot programs to address specific health-care problems, such as Type II diabetes.
"The most difficult places to build a quality health facility are the very areas where the need is greatest and where patients have the least ability to pay," Bush said Wednesday at the Grace Hill Neighborhood Health Center. It is located in this traditionally Democratic area of Missouri, a swing state in presidential elections.
The clinic's medical director, Dr. Robert W. Edmonds, a pediatrician who spent 23 years in a rural area of central Missouri, said improvements are needed.
"You do not build major programs based upon transients (doctors) that come in every two to three years and leave," Edmonds said.
The initiative is the latest in a series aimed at attracting support to Bush's presidential campaign by appealing to independents and moderate Democrats.
In recent weeks, the presumptive GOP nominee has made education, environmental and home ownership proposals.
Both proposals were made against a backdrop of questions about health care in Texas, where Bush has served as governor since 1995.
Some 1.4 million of the nearly 11 million children nationwide without health insurance are Texans, according to state health officials.
From 1996 to 1999, 193,400 Texas children, or 14.2 percent, were dropped from Medicaid, according to a report by Families USA, a Washington-based nonprofit group that supports affordable health and long-term care for all Americans.
About 25 percent of the state's overall population is uninsured.
Meanwhile, Texas Health Commissioner William "Reyn" Archer apologized Tuesday for comments he made in newspaper interviews about Hispanics and teen pregnancy.
Archer told The New York Times that Texas' high teen pregnancy rate came about because the state's Hispanic population lacked the belief "that getting pregnant is a bad thing."
He made similar comments to the Austin American-Statesman.
Vice President Al Gore, Bush's Democratic opponent, pounced on the proposal outlined by Bush on Tuesday in Cleveland.
"Perhaps Bush calls this proposal his 'New Prosperity Initiative' because fixing health care, affordable housing and lifting people out of poverty are all 'new' to him, since he has failed to address these issues in Texas," said a campaign statement.
Asked today to respond to the Gore criticisms, Bush demurred, as is his policy on days when he makes major speeches.
In the latest proposal, Bush would:
--Expand beyond the 3,000 community-based primary care sites that serve as a health care safety net for 11 million patients, 4.4 million of whom are uninsured.
Whole areas of the country still lack access to any health care services.
--Revise the health services corps so the rules more efficiently send doctors to the neediest areas.
--Model the "Healthy Communities Innovation Fund" after Texas programs that, among other things, teach healthy lifestyles and nutrition.
Before flying home to Texas, Bush had a meeting with Archbishop Justin F. Rigali, leader of the St. Louis Roman Catholic archdiocese.
The governor was criticized after speaking in February at Bob Jones University, a South Carolina school whose leaders have espoused anti-Catholic views. He later apologized for not speaking out against school policies that banned interracial dating, a policy the university later dropped, as well as for any offense taken by Catholics.
Since then, he has also met with the archbishop of Newark, N.J., although campaign aides denied he was trying to make amends for the Bob Jones visit. They noted that Bush had three similar meetings before his speech at the university.
"This is a continuation of what we have been doing since 1999," said spokesman Ari Fleischer.