MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – Hillary Rodham Clinton, who worked on a plan to expand health care coverage in the U.S. years before the Affordable Care Act, visited with young patients Thursday at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where families of patients suffering from pediatric cancer and other illnesses pay nothing for treatment, travel, housing and food.
The former Secretary of State then spoke at the opening of the Marlo Thomas Center for Global Education and Collaboration on the campus of the Memphis hospital. Thomas, an actress and the daughter of St. Jude founder Danny Thomas, is the face of the hospital’s national outreach efforts and a winner of the 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
St. Jude is considered a leading researcher of cancer and other life-threatening diseases that affect children. The hospital says it is working to increase the overall survival rate for childhood cancer to 90 percent in the next decade. The hospital relies heavily on donations from the public, which makes up three-quarters of the hospital’s funding, said Richard Shadyac Jr., president and CEO of St. Jude’s fundraising organization.
“This is what health care should look like. Patients before profits. Collaboration before competition. And that is particularly the health care that every single child deserves,” she said. The statement drew applause from the audience.
It was Clinton’s second visit to St. Jude. She first came in 1994, when she was first lady and her husband, Bill Clinton, was in his first term. She led a 1993 task force that unsuccessfully sought legislation in Congress to achieve universal health care coverage.