With Clinics, Bush Leaves Compassionate Mark

One Bush project that President-elect Obama isn’t likely to overturn is the expansion of funding for nonprofit medical clinics in underserved areas. The push—unequalled since Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty—to provide accessible health care for the poor and uninsured was one of the campaign promises President Bush described as “compassionate conservatism,” the New York Times reports.

Though access to clinics is by no means universal, funding for the program more than doubled and the number of people reached jumped to 16 million. To proponents of universal health care, the clinics are merely a stopgap, but to their patients, they are a godsend. “You can go and feel like you’re being treated like a person,” one says.