Hundreds of area residents in need of medical, vision and dental care began lining up last Friday afternoon at Signal Mountain Middle/High School to secure a ticket for a two-day, free clinic that started Saturday. Many camped out in line Friday night. On Saturday morning, 376 people got one of the 400 available tickets. The hundreds who came later had to be turned away.
Their circumstances are easily imaginable. Almost half of Tennessee’s employers, particularly smaller businesses, now do not provide insurance. One of every six among us has no health insurance.
Many lower-wage workers cannot afford insurance even if it’s offered. Self-employed people and younger workers frequently can’t afford insurance. And TennCare accepts just the very poor.
Those who lined up for the rare, free care easily could have been any among us — friends or family members, people with jobs or those laid off. The free clinic selflessly provided by volunteer members of the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps is a fine service, but it’s rare.
Until the first pieces of health-care reform began a few months ago, many more might have been in line. Until then, many people with pre-existing conditions could not get insurance at any cost. Others had their insurance policies canceled when they got sick, or were stuck with undue limits on their medical care, or they couldn’t carry their children on their policies.
Those who pretend to believe that our country should continue to be the only advanced nation in the world without an affordable, accessible, universal health care system should consider the consequences. There but for the grace of God would go many of us. Which raises haunting questions: What would we rather have in place of health care reform? Why are its critics so blind?