Another week in America and Remote Area Medical.

I love living here; I really do. I love Los Angeles; it is a wild, happening crazy city and there is always something to do.

It's a great place to eat and if you mention that there is a new restaurant or coffee shop that's opened people are all ears; they gather around. This applies to all classes as here everybody eats out a lot – we eat out about three times a week.

3rd Street is full of restaurants and there was an article or series in the LA Weekly some time ago where the writer tried to eat his way through all of them; he ate through all kinds of ethnic food and all kinds of meat including goat – which I ate once and found delicious – so this post is not meant to be anti-American.

I received an e-mail the other day from a friend in England and he said how great it was that the Obama Health Care Plan had been passed by Congress.

Indeed it is wonderful that it is on the books but it wasn't the health care plan that Obama set out to achieve; there is no public option.

Most of us here don't know what has been passed and how it will affect us but what we do know is that on the day the bill passed the shares in health care insurance companies shot up – so they think it's a good deal for them.

Everybody will have to carry health insurance whether we can afford it or not.

Now let me tell you how many people in this country, the richest country in the world, are without health insurance – 40 million.

If these people are sick they have to buy Robitussin from the pharmacists and hope for the best; if they suddenly have appendicitis they find themselves $25,000 or so in debt which usually ends up in bankruptcy; in fact the majority of bankruptcies here are for medical reasons; they call them medical bankruptcies.

So whether the Obama Health Care Plan is going to have any legs is anybody's guess. Last week the Remote Area Medical team came to the sports centre here in Los Angeles - you will see above at the top of the page ordinary middle class people waiting outside.


On the first day, Tuesday, they carried out procedures which included 95 tooth extractions, 22 oral surgeries, 470 fillings, prescriptions for 140 eyeglasses, 45 mammograms, 43, HIV tests and 96 Pap smears.

You have to ask yourself why the equivalent of Doctors Without Borders are in the second biggest city in the richest country in the world? And I think I have answered that earlier.

In Los Angeles 22% of adults are without medical insurance; that's why they are here.

I have to conclude that it may be too late here for a national health service or any kind of universal health care – or what they call here socialized medicine; I hope I'm wrong.

Remote Area Medical – or RAM – was started by Stan Brock; I looked him up on Wikipedia and he was was born in 1936 in Preston, Lancashire, England.

He was educated at Canford School, Wimborne, Dorset. His father, a civil servant, was posted to the British Colony of Guyana.

He was known on TV for a show called Wild Kingdom and seems to have had, so far, an amazing life – wrestling with anacondas in the Amazon Basin for example.
When RAM were here last time there was a problem as they couldn't bring doctors into the state unless they had a Californian licence to practice; so the doctors without borders status had to be kicked into touch.

So each time they visit a state they have to advertise for volunteers; I think we might volunteer next time; not because of our medical expertise – even though Margaret is a qualified nurse (in the UK) – but to help organizing the queues etc.

They need to people to stand in line for somebody who has to relieve themselves or go to another queue and, you know - it'll be an experience.

At the sports centre they have notices saying 'line for fillings,' line for extractions,' 'line for spectacles' and all the other ailments.

There have been interviews on the radio with some of the doctors – on kpcc.org if you fancy listening – and one of the doctors said that it is just like being in the third world; the poor of the third world are the same as our poor.

Stan Brock shows up to each venue and uses a loud hailer to organise things; he said he sees many things but gets the greatest satisfaction when he sees people newly fitted with glasses; it's as if they've been given sight from being blind, I suppose, and I can easily understand it.

There are very sad cases; a doctor said there was a patient who had diabetes and hadn't taken her meds for six years; the doctor said she was dreading the results of the examinations as the organs will be in failure.

The RAM will be travelling on next week to Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland and other states and each time they will be looking for volunteers.

Here's a letter from Stan Brock - http://www.ramusa.org/about/letter.htm - if you want to write a screenplay what better subject could you want?