Michele Bachmann told a crowd over the weekend that Americans can rely on charitable organizations if they cannot afford health care. I actually saw evidence of this over the weekend in Los Angeles. But even this charitable foundation understands that there is no substitute for getting Americans enrolled in some mechanism that can get them the continuing care everyone in this country needs.

I thought the President was pretty clear yesterday – he thinks we’ve cut the domestic and defense budgets to the bone, and any future savings must come out of a combination of tax revenues and so-called “modest adjustments” to health care programs. So you can forget about that defense-heavy trigger being fired, and even if it is, the defense lobby will have all of 2012 to come up with a substitute for the cuts. And some of the potential areas for cuts in that trigger include some of the best spending in the Affordable Care Act, for community health centers.

The best money spent in the Affordable Care Act was the $11 billion dollars put toward expanding and maintaining community health centers across the country. That money will get poured directly into universal care programs for the poor, and possibly lead to some innovations in how we treat people, not just one illness or injury at a time but a comprehensive approach to wellness. The best model for this in the country is San Francisco’s universal care program, Healthy SF, which provides for care for everyone in the city limits, regardless of health, employment or immigration status. It’s not single-payer health care, it’s socialized medicine, and it’s led to significant reductions in the uninsured and a healthier city.

I first wrote about community health centers in the health care law in December, and have subsequently written at least 20 other articles referring to them. I maintain that it was the best money in the entire bill, adding the capacity for millions of people to access what amounts to a universal care program of free or near-free primary care medicine.

Looking through the manager’s amendment, one of the best pieces of pure good news is the extra money going to community health care centers and the National Health Service Corps fund. Community health care centers provide the vital service of getting individual cost effective primary care