Chris Togneri writes for the Federalist website about an issue that gets lost in the debate about the future of government-mandated health insurance. That issue is health care access.
“We have great technology — if you can afford it,” says Stan Brock, the man with the British accent. “But millions and millions of people in this country simply cannot afford it. That’s why you’re seeing huge crowds like this.”
Brock, who starred in the old television show “Wild Kingdom,” founded Remote Area Medical, or RAM, in 1985 after noting a lack of affordable health care in Guyana, where he had been injured while living with the Wapishana Indians. His focus quickly shifted to the United States, however, when he realized that the need here was just as urgent.
As politicians debate and our president tweets about the best way to approach health care for Americans, Brock and his army of volunteers march the country and do what the government is either unable or unwilling to do: They make sure anyone within their reach has access to health care.
“It’s obviously the fault of the two principal parties that don’t seem to be able to agree on the best way to do it,” Brock says as he sits in the RAM Command Center, a trailer in the parking lot outside the Wise Fairgrounds. “The Affordable Care Act didn’t fix it, didn’t make any difference to the size of the crowds we see all around the U.S. Then I read the House version and that’s not going to do it. And then I read the preamble, a couple hundred pages, to the Senate version and that’s not going to do it either.”
The system is broken, Brock says. But no one in government seems to be listening.
That leaves RAM and clinics like this one in Wise—where 2,000 people receive free medical, dental, and vision care—to serve as “the voice of the people,” he says.
