See, volunteers from the schools of medicine and dentistry at USC, partnered with the organization Care Harbor, are currently giving free health and dental care to people who come to the L.A. arena. It started yesterday and will continue through Sunday.
Oh, the line-sitters? They aren't waiting to get in to see a doctor or a dentist. No, that only began Thusday. That line is from Monday, when they started handing out wristbands so that nearly 5000 people without insurance could get that lump checked or that cavity filled. Especially the latter, since many people who have health insurance don't have dental, the two things oddly not linked by most insurers.
People started lining up last Friday, sleeping out so that they could have a chance to see medical professionals. In one of the biggest cities in the United States in the year 2012. Whenever someone talks about people in other countries being "savages" or uncivilized, the Rude Pundit thinks of sights like this:
One last thing: the reason people lined up so early? That's obvious. Because the clinic only had so much time and so many volunteers. And people, sick people, hurting people, dying people, were turned away.
Elections have consequences. Once upon a time Mitt Romney would have said he had a solution to this problem. He doesn't claim so now. President Obama's solution, which certainly won't solve everything, but would get us a hell of a lot closer, is slowly coming into action.
Maybe, sometimes, it's a moral issue that moves a person, a feeling of disgust and despair that puts one in the mind of the poor and disempowered in our society. You don't wait three nights outside for a chance to see a doctor a few days later because taxes are too high or because Israel's prime minister is feeling neglected or because government-run health care won't give you your choice of doctors or whatever. You sleep in that line because you don't have anywhere else to go, except here, in one of of the biggest cities. In America. Right now.
