This week, Remote Area Medical, an organization that got its start providing health care services to the impoverished in the Third World, descended on Inglewood to provide those same services to the most disenfranchised group, from a medical care standpoint, in the industrialized world – the uninsured and underinsured in America.
They came for new teeth mostly, but also for blood pressure checks, mammograms, immunizations and acupuncture for pain. Neighboring South Los Angeles is a place where health care is scarce, and so when it was offered nearby, word got around.
For the second day in a row, thousands of people lined up on Wednesday – starting after midnight and snaking into the early hours – for free dental, medical and vision services, courtesy of a nonprofit group that more typically provides mobile health care for the rural poor.
Like a giant MASH unit, the floor of the Forum, the arena where Madonna once played four sold-out shows, housed aisle upon aisle of dental chairs, where drilling, cleaning and extracting took place in the open. A few cushions were duct-taped to a folding table in a coat closet, an examining room where Dr. Eugene Taw, a volunteer, saw patients.
These were not only uninsured patients, over 1,500 in the first day alone, but underinsured patients who cannot get the services they need with their coverage.
No cable news outlet discussing health care reform and the town halls around it ever get around to mentioning this reality. In the poorest areas of this country, health care access is so nonexistent that people will wait around for days in their cars, driving for sometimes hundreds of miles, to find a volunteer clinic that they now use as their primary care physician. South Los Angeles lost one of its only health care providers when King-Drew Medical Center shut down a couple years back, and really nobody, outside of Remote Area Medical, has filled the breach. This is an absolute tragedy, and at the end of the day, it costs our medical system far more than it would to cover everyone, because nagging problems only served by free clinics every couple years eventually find their way into the emergency room. And the disconnect between this circumstance and those right-wingers yelling and shrieking across the country is striking.
The enormous response to the free care was a stark corollary to the hundreds of Americans who have filled town-hall-style meetings throughout the country, angrily expressing their fear of the Obama administration’s proposed changes to the nation’s health care system. The bleachers of patients also reflected the state’s high unemployment, recent reduction in its Medicaid services for the poor and high deductibles and co-payments that have come to define many employer-sponsored insurance programs.
Somebody should leak to one of the astroturf groups activating the right about these town halls that there will be a major Congressional event over at the Forum in Inglewood, and then sit back and watch their face sink when they show up to protest and instead encounter the horrors of this broken system.
It would be wonderful to see the wingnuts shouting “Suck it up!” “Get a job!” and “Go back to Mexico” to the folks waiting in line.
The chatter on the RW blogs is, of course, that most of these patients are “illegals”.
I’ve directed them to the news stories about RAM’s free clinic last month, which helped out nearly 6000 people in Wise County Virgina – which is 93.4% white, according to census data.
My Medi-Cal benefits don’t cost Me anything and they ain’t easy to get(I get SSI as I’m a disabled person and one does not just sign up for It and get It, One needs real medical proof as a diagnosis is never good enough as It took Me 6 years to get SSI as It took Me 6 years to get the proof), But for one operation all I’ve gotten is You live too far away(Baloney), I live in Yermo CA and the Doctors who could do this under My benefits are in Long Beach CA(Cheapskates and Charlatans), Yet two of My relatives(Ones an RN) got the same surgery plus a lap band and they live in Victorville CA and had the Surgery down in Long Beach CA which is where the Doctors are at that could operate on Me, But the Doctor won’t operate on Me as they say I’m over 30 miles away and that’s clearly a phony excuse, My relatives paid in cash, I only have IEHP/Medi-Cal(Medicaid outside CA). What type of surgery am I typing about? Plastic surgery on My abdomen and thighs to stop the constant painful red rashes that I get from happening and yeah tonight I’ll have to use some powder(medicated) after using a cool wet wash cloth to cool the skin down in the affected area, My last idiot doctor said I want to send You to a nutritionist and then to a skin doctor, Before that It was to an internal medicine doctor and He said He couldn’t help Me, The last time I saw the Doc He said He doubted I have any such benefit(It’s in the IEHP Booklet that I do indeed have that Medical Benefit), My last Doctor is/was a QUACK! But then I don’t go there anymore as I was switched to some other Doctor by IEHP as Medi-Cal reimbursements to Doctors was reduced again and some Doctors are just plain Greedy bastards.
Also the operation would help My ankle and hip joints(both ankles and the right hip were damaged after I’d broke My left leg in 2002, I had no rehab back then, My left foot was really stiff and would not lay on Its side at first as It took Me a bit to recover movement there, But I still can’t walk too far cause If I do the left ankle starts to hurt as It feels like something is grating down there when I do push My luck and running? That’s out for more than 1 reason).