Topic: Health Care
Remote Area Medical : The Healthcare Savior? Is Remote Area Medical the wave of the future for health care to the poor? Find out what may become tomorrow’s solutions for health care...by JJJ
(Libertarian)
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Remote Area Medical is a volunteer organization that started it's roots in the Amazon. Stan Brock, the founder of this organization, dedicated his life to providing health care to remote regions on our planet after he spent over fifteen years in the Amazon rain forest witnessing tribes without modern day health care. This organization continued to blossom through charitable donations and countless volunteers. They provide services in rural areas of Africa and South America.
Recently, Remote Area Medical has also been providing dental, medical, veterinary, and vision care to rural areas in the United States. Many of these areas have under-insured and impoverished people who were unable to obtain health care otherwise. Most people find it a shock to see that conditions we would expect only in the darkest forests on the other side of the planet are in fact occurring every day around us in the United States. In fact, 60% of their services are provided here in the United States.
One thing I would like to take a moment to note about this organization is that it is 100% handled and facilitated in the free market. They are run by volunteers and receive their funding through donations. According to their website, 90% of their donations go directly to their service programs. That is far more efficient then any federal bureaucracy. This provides us with a very functional example of a non-subsidized organization that is providing medical services that many of our politicians are being lobbied to subsidize. This goes to show that even though the medical industrial complex has been successfully monopolizing the industry through legislation, the free market still fills in the gap that no amount of throwing money at a bureaucracy can do.
To read more about Remote Area Medical, visit their website at www.ramusa.org.
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2008 JJJ, all rights reserved.
Published: Sunday, March 2, 2008
Last modified: Monday, March 3, 2008
The views expressed in this
article are those of JJJ only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. JJJ is
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employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
I saw this on 60 minutes. It IS amazing especially since they have no corporate sponsorship - unlike the American Dental Association's annual "Give Kids A Smile Day" (GKAS) which does more to promote dentistry and the Corporations that fund it than to actually fill cavities and pull rotted teeth as the Remote Area Medical volunteer dentists do.
GKAS Day is a huge media even that attracts politicians and dentists who like to get their pictures in the paper. Most of the GKAS events across the country, occuring in February, are just about teaching kids to brush, floss and eat healthy and here's your free gift pack of toothbrushes, toothpaste, and floss provided by ____________who sponsored the event. Very few GKAS day events actually include treating teeth.
This is the first I ever heard of Remote Area Medical. Maybe the corporate sponsors will jump on board now that it's made the media.
Posted By: Jim Lackovich (CBT)
Date: 2008-03-08 22:19:55
The Campaign for a Better Tomorrow is launching a project in conjunction with Remote Area Medical (www.ramusa.org)/(www.ramv.ca) named "OPERATION: HEALTH CARE WAGON", the goal is to transport patients from the Northeast of the US to TN, because the law prohibits them from coming to us. If you would like to support/sponsor please
goto www.OperationHealthCareWagon.latest-info.com or email us at Operation_HealthCareWagon@yahoo.com
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2008 JJJ, all rights reserved.