I was born in the mid sixties and grew up watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom every Sunday night. Martin Perkins or his assistant Jim Fowler and later Stan Brock were often seen wrestling with giant snakes or being chased around then eventually tackling to the ground a whole host of wild animals. The program was my first exposure to the natural world beyond the small patch of woods filled with squirrels and birds in the backyard of my childhood home. Wild Kingdom was an exciting, adventurous view of the mysterious world of jungles, savannas, deltas and other remote locations. The program originally aired from 1963 to 1987.
In 1985, Stan Brock founded the nonprofit organization Remote Area Medical (RAM). According to their website, before working with Perkins, Brock spent fifteen years with the Wapishana Indians of the Amazon rain forest. He witnessed first hand the agony people living in isolated tribes had endured simply because they did not have access to basic modern medical care. www.ramusa.org
Working out of a building donated to him by the city of Knoxville, Brock began flying plane loads of supplies, volunteer doctors, nurses, technicians, and veterinarians to remote areas of the world to providing free health care.
Then Brock looked around his own backyard and found many Americans in rural and urban parts of the country also suffered from either a complete lack of or tragically inadequate health care. Which is sadly ironic since Mutual of Omaha sells health insurance. In fact, the U.S. has the most expensive system and is ranked 37 in the world in its delivery of medical services. http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
We are also the only nation in the world where an illness can completely wipe you out financially. Somewhere around 50% of all bankruptcies in the U.S. are a result, in one way or another, of a health related problem. www.factcheck.org
With over 46 million Americans uninsured and unknown millions of Americans underinsured, more and more free clinics are finding themselves overwhelmed, under funded, and simply unable to provide even the most basic needs to their communities.
Proponents of our current health care system – one based on a corporate profits model- often point to isolated cases where someone in England or Canada has to wait on average one month or six months longer for a certain elected surgery than the average American with health insurance. The proponents never seem to mention the uninsured or underinsured Americans that elect not to get the elected surgery. That is because those that "elect" not to have the surgery often do so simply because they can’t afford it.
Which is the whole problem here, our current health care system is built around insurance and pharmaceutical companies making the decisions that personal doctors in the U.K. and Canada are allowed to make under a universal, aka socialist health care system.
We all know insurance companies can’t make money on sick people. With millions of Americans unable to afford even basic health care, the current profit driven system results in America having one of the highest infant mortality and lowest life expectancies rates in the industrial world.
In other words, our system is great if you are rich and have insurance, elected surgeries are performed quickly. But if you are poor, you are out of luck. In the U.S., the rich get bumped to the front of the line, while the poor get bumped out of the line all together.
Last year, 60 Minutes did a segment on RAM and one of the free health care expeditions held in their home town of Knoxville. According to 60 Minutes, over the course of a weekend they "saw 920 patients, made 500 pairs of glasses, did 94 mammograms, extracted 1066 teeth and did 567 fillings. But when Stan Brock called the last number, 400 people were turned away. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4256735n&tag=related;photovideo
Now a days, 60% of RAM’s work is focused on rural and urban America. With an annual budget of around $250,000, made up almost entirely of small individual contributions, it is amazing to think they saw some 17,000 patients last year alone. RAM claims to have now seen over 300,000 patients world wide.
RAM is currently registering volunteers for their upcoming Los Angeles, California expedition, being held at the Forum in Inglewood from August 11 to 18, 2009. RAM is looking for medical doctors of all kinds willing to come to L.A. (at their own expense,) and provide free care to thousands of Americans in desperate need of basic health care over the course of one week. For more information about RAM’s nationwide schedule, to donate, or volunteer visit their website provided at the top of this article.
For additional information about health care in the U.S., who is covered and who is not, and what else you can do, check out the National Coalition on Health Care website at http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml
Given the fact that health care reform is currently being debated in Washington, getting more informed and writing letters to our representatives can be just as vital as donating money or volunteering.
Personally, I find it sad that my country, the richest country in the world, has yet to make it a priority to provide universal health care for all Americans. I find it sad that if you get sick you can go bankrupt. I often have to ask myself, "What does that say about us?" And the answer I keep coming up with is never good.
Looking back now, I guess it seems only fitting that a health insurance company once sponsored a show where survival of the fittest seems to be the mantra their whole industry would adopt in its approach to providing coverage. And all I can say about that is, thank goodness Stan Brock moved beyond Mutual of Omaha.
Dean Walker
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