Here’s a healthcare horror story on a national level: 60 Minutes’ report on Remote Area Medical (RAM), which sets up emergency clinics in the world’s neediest areas. Recently, though, RAM set up its massive clinic, for a weekend, in an exhibit hall in Knoxville, Tenn. Founded to transport U.S. doctors to truly remote areas to provide medical service, RAM is now running weekend clinics in urban as well as rural U.S. areas.

As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, “Remote Area Medical sets up emergency clinics where the needs are greatest. But these days, that’s not the Amazon. This charity founded to help people who can’t reach medical care finds itself throwing America a lifeline.”

Patients, some of whom have to drive hours to reach the clinic sites, begin arriving in the middle of the night in order to make sure they get a number low enough to be seen that day. Those who have cars sit in them all night in the cold, running the motor just enough to take the chill off. Even gas approaching $4.00 a gallon is cheaper than the cost of medical services close to home.

The patients’ stories are heartbreaking, but, even more sadly, not surprising. The pain of an infected tooth, or glasses that are no longer strong enough to make out people’s faces, or it’s past time for a post-surgical checkup for cervical cancer (because the patient has 3 kids and her husband lost his job a few months ago). Ross Isaacs, one of the volunteer doctors, was asked who these patients are. “It’s the working poor … most with families, most not substance abusers and employed without adequate insurance.”

The clinics serve about 500 people each weekend day, the numbers are growing, and the clinic weekend documented in the piece had to turn away more than 400 people at the end of Sunday.

Stan Brock, the founder of RAM and originally a Brit, said he thought it really sad that the wealthiest nation in the world can’t take care of its own. When asked how RAM is funded, Brock explained, “We operate entirely on the generosity of the American people. I’d like to say that we had big corporate support in America but we don’t. So it’s the little checks from those people who send in the $5 and $10.”

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