When Stan Brock started Remote Area Medical (RAM) in 1985, never in his wildest dreams did he think his services would be needed in the United States, the wealthiest country in the world.
RAM began as an all-volunteer mobile medical clinic that provided free and immediate health care to people living in remote areas of the Amazon rainforest. In 1992, he was asked to bring the clinic to Knoxville, Tennessee. He was shocked by what he saw.
“People were in desperate need of the most basic care,” he said at RAM’s most recent expedition in Oakland, California last month. “It didn’t occur to me when I first came to this country, but it wasn’t long before I could see there were similarities between people who don’t have access to healthcare in a place like the Amazon and people who have access but can’t afford it in America – and they’re all in the same boat.”
An estimated 50 million Americans are uninsured and another 25 million are underinsured, meaning they can’t pay the difference between what their insurance will cover and the total cost of their medical bills. Someone files for bankruptcy every 30 seconds in the US because of a serious health problem, according to a Harvard University study.
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