Free clinic sponsor objects to District fee

[cal04]

$77,000 is 'prohibitively high,' says nonprofit group planning health-care event
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/11/AR2009121104179.html?hpid=topnews

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.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. We had a C.A.R.E. Clinic here this week and the teabaggers complained about the cost

of using the local convention center.

[Joanne98]

2. Greed is killing the country!