Bucks County Health Clinic Gets $125,000 Grant Funded By Casino Taxes
By Brad Segall
BENSALEM, Pa. (CBS) -- Some of the money that gamblers lose at the more than 3,500 slot machines at Parx Casino in Bensalem will be used to provide health care to uninsured and underinsured county residents.
The Bucks County Redevelopment Authority has awarded more than $3.8 million in "casino impact grants," funded through taxes on the slot machines.
A grant of $125,000 is going to the Bucks County Health Improvement Partnership for its clinic in Bensalem. Executive director Sally Fabian says that money will keep them from scaling back care to thousands of patients without insurance.
"What we know is that people are sicker and needing more care, and we are their medical home," she said today. "We're the place that they come to be seen."
Fabian says annual visits to the Knights Road clinic have more than doubled since the economic downturn started five years ago. She says many of their clients are also coming in with more serious health problems because they're going longer without getting medical attention.
