Public Health Centers Struggle to Keep Up

STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga., March 13, 2009 — The healthcare safety net is straining. Just look at Jeffrey Taylor's parking lot.

Taylor oversees a community health center for the poor in this suburb a dozen miles east of downtown Atlanta. The center, a modest one-story brick building on a hillside, has never been busier. People who recently lost their jobs and health insurance fill the waiting rooms, and their cars jam into the clinic's 50-space parking lot - with much of the overflow ending up at the nightclub next door.