Much coverage has been given to tea-partiers. But in 2008 RAM treated 24,000 people in free clinics

[JohnWxy]

Since they weren't carrying signs showing offensive caricatures of Obama they weren't worth that much air-time.

"Remote Area Medical served 24,000 patients in the United States last year on a budget of $944,000, Brock said"

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/PersonOfWeek/story?id=8330961&page=1



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-brutal-truth-about-americarsquos-healthcare-1772580.html

They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram, others had brought their children for immunizations that could end up saving their life.

In the week that Britain's National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an "evil and Orwellian" example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system.

The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed – for eight days only – into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news of the magical medical kingdom spread rapidly and long lines of prospective patients snaked around the venue for the chance of getting everyday treatments that many British people take for granted.



U.S. Health Care Gets Boost From Charity


One of the decisive issues in the presidential campaign is likely to be health care. Some 47 million Americans have no health insurance, and that's just the start: millions more are underinsured, unable to pay their deductibles or get access to dental care.

Recently, 60 Minutes heard about an American relief organization that airdrops doctors and medicine into the jungles of the Amazon. It's called Remote Area Medical, or "RAM" for short.

As correspondent Scott Pelley first reported last March, Remote Area Medical sets up emergency clinics where the needs are greatest. But these days that's not the Amazon. This charity founded to help people who can't reach medical care finds itself throwing America a lifeline.

[Mopar151]

1. A conservative I know said it best, 10 years ago

"How come, with all the friggin' taxes I pay, there's a donation can for some sick kid in every beer store from here to New Jersy?"

[JohnWxy]

2. living in a Republican Dystopia. Ain't it grand. Decades of keeping wages down, while transferring

the tax burden to the middle class and lightening it for the top 2%, deregulatioin of financial markets and protecting predatory lenders. Welcome to the Republican Dystopia. Health care system that puts us about last in the developed world. Low economic growth and low job creation because most of the people have lost too much buying power (midian income went down 1998-2008) to create enough demand to produce growth in jobs.

http://sites.google.com/site/republicandystopia/Republican_Dystopia.htm

[Mopar151]

4. He's figurin' out how bad he's been used

And he's beginning to despise O'Liely.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, JohnWxy.