High Gas Prices Don’t Deter RAM Clinic Patients

* The RAM clinic continues at the Wise County Fairgrounds today and Sunday, and registration begins at 6 a.m. daily; services are offered on a first-come, first-served basis, and people line up well before the start of registration.
* For information on free medical, dental and vision screenings and help with medication, go to http://www.thehealthwagon.org or call (276) 835-9474.

WISE, Va. – Stan Brock was worried that high gas prices would mean fewer patients at this year’s Remote Area Medical Health Expedition, but the reverse has been true: numbers are up.

“What they were spending to get here, the $100 plus in fuel, far outweighed what it would have cost trying to get this care ... and suffering through the pain,” Brock, the organization’s founder, said, adding that hundreds more people showed up for the first day of the clinic this year than last.

“Gas could go up to $10,” he said, “and a lot of people would still be here.”

Delores Weigel of Marion, Va., said even as numbers increase, the price of gasoline is keeping some people away.

She and two friends split the cost of gas and a motel room so they could access health care here this weekend. She said five family members who also wanted to make the trip had to stay home because gas costs $4 a gallon.

“You don’t realize how many people are uninsured, and then you come to a place like this and it’s just overwhelming,” said Weigel, who came to have a tooth pulled and have her eyes checked. “I’m sure this is not even half of it.”

She says dental and vision care are standard under the Medicaid program in New Jersey, where she used to live, but in Virginia such services are not covered.

“It’s really depressing,” she said. “A lot of people are just getting all their teeth out.”

Gov. Tim Kaine toured the Wise County fairgrounds on Friday, talking with medical, dental and vision patients, and stating the need for a federal government solution to the nation’s health care crisis.

“It’s an embarrassment for the country,” Kaine said, noting the shame he feels that some Virginians pay taxes to pay for his health care while they can’t afford health care themselves.

“We may be leaders in the country in a lot of things,” he said of the commonwealth, “but the area where we tend to be the weakest is health.”

He said the RAM clinic inspired him to push for increased state funding for free health services.

Kaine said this year more money is available for free clinics and community health centers; more money is available to Health Wagon, the group that organizes the event in Wise; the income threshold has been raised for access to prenatal care and a dental clinic is to be constructed on the campus of UVA-Wise.

“We’re doing things, but we’re frankly nibbling around the edges of this big problem. One in seven Virginians, one in seven Americans, that don’t have health coverage,” Kaine said. “We’ll keep trying to come up with innovative strategies, but we also want to push that there be a national consensus that people would not be deprived of health care access because of income.”

Making his fourth visit to a RAM clinic in the Wise event’s nine-year history, Kaine said he came back again to gain a new sense of urgency on the lack of health care access.

“The tremendous need is always overwhelming, and then also the tremendous volunteerism,” he said. “It’s kind of depressing and inspirational at the same time.”

Volunteers came from around the country at their own expense to help patients this weekend.

“My mom came from what used to be called Wood, Va., halfway between Dungannon and Blackmore,” said Robert Findley, a dentist from Vevay, Ind. “I just feel like putting a little something back in.”

Findley said he practices in the poorest county in Indiana and access to dental care here is “incredibly poorer.”

“You see more people coming through that just need full-mouth extractions,” he said. “They haven’t had preventive care.”

Ricky Parks, 57, of Nickelsville, Va., said he camped out Thursday night to be sure he’d get to see a dentist on Friday.

“I can’t afford it, just like everybody else,” Parks said of dental care as he waited in line to receive at no cost. “I’ll tell you what, it’s expensive.”

Pat Finnerty, Medicaid director for Virginia, said the lack of care affordability is not just in Southwest Virginia – it’s across the state. He said very few adults are covered by Medicaid for dental services.
“This is a huge help,” Finnerty said of RAM. “This is pretty much the source of dental care for these folks.”

Angel Henley, 31, of Jonesborough, Tenn., said it’s true for her.

“This is the only time we get to see a dentist at all. And doctors, too, unless it’s an absolute emergency,” Henley said as she waited in line Friday. “This is my third or fourth year up here, and it’s just a godsend.”

She said she’s worried about her husband, who needs medication to avoid seizures. The drugs cost more than $600 a month, and it is no longer covered by his insurance.

“The job that I have, they keep me at part time so they don’t have to offer me medical insurance or anything else,” she said.

Henley said she hopes a solution will come with the presidential election in November – some form of universal health care.

She said it wouldn’t require an elaborate government program; the government could provide events like this, every few months and in more locations.

Brock, the founder of RAM, would like to see that happen, but he says government is blocking the way.

“We could replicate the Remote Area Medical model across the United States,” Brock said. “It can fill a substantial part of the [health care] gap.”

But, he said, doctors ready and willing to help are prevented from doing so by laws and regulations that prohibit them from crossing state lines to provide free health care.

Even within states, there are roadblocks. Brock said 120 eye patients were seen three weeks ago in Pikeville, Ky., but 343 were turned away because the state’s board of optometry would not allow optometrists in the state to participate.

He said since RAM was featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes in March, the organization has received more than 10,000 pieces of mail, many of them requesting RAM clinics in their communities.

The program was started to deliver medical care to remote natives in the Amazon rainforest, but it came to the United States in 1992 because people here similarly lack access to medical care – though the problem here is not distance or logistics; it’s ability to pay.

“Health care in the United States is a privilege of the wealthy and the well-insured,” Brock said.

According to the 60 Minutes report, 47 million Americans are uninsured and millions more who have insurance still can’t afford to pay for care.

Brock’s organization has conducted more than 400 health expeditions here and abroad. He said the median cost for a dental or vision patient to be seen at such clinics is less than $4.

“There are press here from all over the world, and it’s been like this since 60 Minutes,” Brock said at Friday’s event. “They’re all asking the same question: Why is this needed in the world’s richest country? Well, it’s needed because no other alternatives exist for the poor.”

He said more RAM expeditions will happen if government can fix the rules to allow doctors to cross state lines – but government also needs to do more to solve the nation’s health care crisis.

“I won’t have any trouble getting doctors from around the United States to go to downtown L.A.” he said. “[But] the solution really should be the government.”

| (276) 791-0701