Why is it not surprising that -- in America -- many people not only can't afford health care, but that the authorities often actively prevent them from getting any health care? In an ongoing dispute in Washington, D.C., private companies and the district's Department of Health have put roadblocks between a well-known provider of free clinics and the people who need health care.
A nonprofit organization that holds free clinics for people who need medical, dental and eye care wants to stage a three-day event in the District, but its leaders say they cannot afford the $77,000 price tag to set up shop at the D.C. Armory, one of the few public sites in the city large enough for the thousands of people who typically show up.
The Washington Convention and Sports Authority, which operates the armory, has estimated that Remote Area Medical, or RAM, as the charity is known, would have to pay at least $77,000 to host the three-day clinic planned for late January, according to an authority document provided by RAM.
Founder Stan Brock said RAM has never been asked by other site operators to pay anything approaching that fee. The cost is "prohibitively high" and still climbing, Brock said in a telephone interview this week from Knoxville, Tenn., where RAM is headquartered. "We just don't know what the bottom line is going to be. There are things that just keep coming up."
Officials with the Washington Convention and Sports Authority did not return calls seeking comment.
The potential price tag is not the only hang-up. The D.C. Department of Health and others in the public health sector have posed a host of questions about the event, particularly about follow-up care for people who would be treated at RAM's clinic.
Created in 1985, RAM has staged more than 500 clinics worldwide. Early on, it focused its efforts on isolated areas of poor countries such as Haiti and Nepal. In the early 1990s, it began staging clinics closer to home as well, focusing on people in the United States who lack adequate health care. For the last decade, for example, it has hosted an annual clinic in rural southwestern Virginia. ...WaPo
It was a visit to Remote Area Medical's Virginia health clinic which influenced insurance company exec, Wendell Potter, to quit his job and join with those who believe in the need for reform of the health care system.
I grew up in Tennessee -- was born in North Carolina but grew up in eastern Tennessee. I was there and picked up a local newspaper, the Kingsport Times-News -- in fact I had an internship there early on! And there's a story about this exposition or health fair that was being held a few miles up the road in Wise, Virginia. I borrowed my dad's car because I was intrigued. I'd never heard of this organization. It had been held for several years and I'd never heard about it because I hadn't lived there in a long time. I wasn't prepared for what I saw. When I drove up to the parking lot of the Wise County fairgrounds, it was jam-packed. I don't think even the county fair would have attracted as many people as this expedition [exposition?] did. I didn't see people until I actually walked inside the fairground gate. When I did, it was absolute overwhelming. I saw people by the hundreds -- probably thousands -- who were lined up, standing in the rain or sitting in the rain... They were waiting to get care that was being provided by doctors and nurses and dentists who were volunteering their time in animal stalls!