The New Third World

[marmar]

Published on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 by High Country News

The New Third World
People are desperate for medical care in the West's inner cities and rural areas.

by Ray Ring


Before dawn every day, they stood in long lines outside the Roman Empire-style Forum arena near downtown Los Angeles. That's how desperate they were to be treated for painfully rotting teeth, blurry eyesight, cancer and other medical problems.

There were grandmothers and little kids, veterans and the disabled, the working poor and laid-off men and women. They couldn't afford to pay for what they needed, often because they had inadequate health insurance or no insurance at all.

During the eight days it was open, the event was the nation's largest free medical clinic. About 6,000 people received treatment before it ended on Aug. 18. But thousands more were turned away, because the organizers lacked the resources to serve everyone who showed up.

Though LA has smaller clinics providing such assistance, "We could be here three months, and we still wouldn't catch up on the demand for the service," Stan Brock, founder of Remote Area Medical, the nonprofit group in charge of the clinic, told NBC News. Based in Tennessee, the group originally organized volunteers to provide clinics in Third World areas. It's expanded to serve people in this country because the degree of suffering here increasingly resembles that in the Third World. Currently 46 million Americans lack health insurance and many more have sizeable gaps in their coverage. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/01-10