The fate of a stimulus-funded clinic hinges on the nation's health care future.

Talking with the people renovating the building is like going to a support group for stimulus-funded professionals. The architect says the health clinic money saved one of his employees' jobs. Transforming the space will employ at least 30 construction workers, many of whom are struggling to find work, according to the contractor. And somebody's got to decorate the place, so an interior designer who was thinking of changing careers because of the recession now has a project to work on. It's hard to doubt the ripple-effect rhetoric of the Obama administration when you talk to these people. The clinic itself is going to employ 15 full-timers. It'll take more than twice that number of part-timers to create it.

Figuring that a new clinic can't fund itself off the bat, the government just provided UNHS with another $1 million. That money will go toward running the place (and the two other new health clinics UNHS is creating with the original $1 million).

But this is where Dickerson's future turns murky. In two years the stimulus's capital money runs out. But the expenses that the stimulus created—clinics like Dickerson—will still need to be paid. So, like a baby turtle abandoned by its mother, Dickerson will have to fend for itself. But it can't do that without Washington extending another favor: comprehensive health care reform.

To understand why, let's knock down the dominoes together. The stimulus recognizes that there is an omnipresent demand for cheap health care. So it stimulates the supply—health clinics—to meet that demand. When an uninsured person goes in for help, he or she isn't as able to pay the full rate for that care. That drains the clinic's capital reserves. The only way for those reserves to be replenished is through an outside infusion (the stimulus) or by having more insured people show up at the clinic.

Which brings us to the health care bill. If Congress can figure out a way to get insurance for everybody (or mostly everybody) in the country, then the clinic would have more insured patients. The cost-revenue balance would be restored.