Volunteers will staff facility in El Cajon
By Anne Krueger
San Diego Union-Tribune
May 2, 2005
Almost four years after Dr. Gresham Bayne of Point Loma heard the pitch for a clinic staffed by volunteer physicians, the medical facility is close to becoming a reality.
Bayne said the clinic will serve thousands of El Cajon residents who can’t afford medical insurance but earn too much to qualify for low-income medical programs such as Medi-Cal.
The clinic will be the first in California to be opened by Volunteers in Medicine, a national organization that works to bring together retired health professionals and patients who don’t have medical insurance. Since 1993, when the group opened its first clinic in Hilton Head Island, S.C., 31 clinics have been set up nationwide.
John Hughes, who heads social service programs for San Diego County Methodist churches, said patients at the clinic will receive “Nordstrom-quality care.” When they arrive, they will be welcomed by a greeter. All services, including medications, are provided at no cost.
Bayne said opponents were concerned the clinic would attract homeless people to the area. He said all new patients will be screened by a social worker to determine whether they are eligible for care, and homeless people will be referred to community clinics.
“We don’t anticipate seeing homeless people except once by mistake,” he said.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20050502-9999-1m2vols.html
Comment: What was that again? Free Nordstrom-quality care but not for those as needy as the homeless?
Apparently the founders of this clinic acknowledge that community clinics should fulfill the role of providing services to the needy, as long as they’re the homeless type. Also they would probably agree that higher-income individuals, insured or not, should receive their care in the private sector. So what is their targeted patient population? Nordstrom-quality health care shoppers who happen to be uninsured? Is there really a sector of individuals who cannot afford private care, but who are of a social class that shouldn’t stoop to utilizing community clinics when private charity can enable access to Nordstrom-quality care?
As with so many other well intentioned efforts, it appears that these individuals have designed a solution without adequately defining the problems. Community clinics already exist and provide a safety-net access to at least basic care for the uninsured who cannot afford private services. We do not need special clinics that are designed to serve an elite sector of the uninsured. Instead, we need to enact policies that would ensure that everyone has insurance.
A proper framing of the problem would lead to solutions that would restructure the way that we fund health care. The obvious solution is universal health insurance. This would not only address the problems of the elite uninsured, it would also ensure that community clinics are adequately funded so that they can provide more comprehensive services in those communities that fail to attract an adequate number of private sector providers.
Let’s get real about fixing our broken system of funding health care. We can begin by first understanding the problems.