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Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling is expected to have a big impact on many patients who use community health centers. Patient Millie Cejas is leaving the Fair Haven Community Health Center with medication to control her blood sugar levels.
"He tenido que pedir la medicina. No la puedo comprar..."
Cejas says she had to ask for medicine because she couldn’t afford to pay for it. Cejas works ten hours a week for $8 an hour, and like about a third of the patients at the clinic has no health coverage.
Inside, Executive Director Katrina Clark says Fair Haven offers patients a sliding fee scale, "…and we do get support from the federal government and the state government. But it's so hard when people need prescriptions, when they need specialists, when they need hospital care. All of those become huge bills."
She calls the Supreme Court health care ruling a wonderful thing for patients.
And she says the next step is for Fair Haven and Connecticut’s 13 other community health centers to begin work on expanding services to handle what may be an influx of new patients.
"When we look at the model of Massachusetts, they didn’t have enough access points to get into the system. And so I think Connecticut is really trying to prepare a little better."
The Fair Haven Community Health Center currently serves about 15,000 people each year at its central clinic, school based health centers and at the Bella Vista Senior Living Community.