For example, my family and I get our healthcare at community clinics which owe their existence to the Senator’s 1966 law allowing them to get federal reimbursements and more by affiliating with hospitals, but remaining community owned and operated.
If you come to town or see footage from the wake at the JFK museum in the next two days, be aware that just a few hundred yards away lies the first such neighborhood clinic in the country, the Geiger-Gibson CHC. Two public-spirited doctors founded it to serve the then-isolated Columbia Point project, along with another one in rural Mississippi. Others among the many health centers that followed had been longstanding institutions, like settlement houses (the Dorchester House) and women’s hospitals (the Dimock Center), dating to the Progressive Era. The law married the personal care and local knowledge of grassroots institutions to the powerful scale and legal guarantees of the federal government. A lasting model of progressive legislation that eventually won the praise and support of Republican administrations — and a good analogy for the public option in healthcare reform.
