Free clinic draws thousands to Oakland Coliseum

President Obama has been hitting the airwaves a lot lately to talk about Japan, Libya, and most recently, about federal spending on the country’s Medicare and Medicaid programs.

In yesterday’s speech, the president responded to a proposal by House Republicans to shift Medicaid responsibility onto the states and turn Medicare into a private insurance, voucher-style program. It’s not that the president disagrees with House Republicans – he too thinks that Medicare costs need to be reigned in. It’s the “how” that distinguishes the two parties:

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The third step in our approach is to further reduce health care spending in our budget. Now here, the difference with the House Republican plan could not be clearer: their plan essentially lowers the government's health care bills by asking seniors and poor families to pay them instead. Our approach lowers the government's health care bills by reducing the cost of health care itself.

While the White House, Democrats, and Republicans duke it out over health spending, people on the ground, in neighborhoods and homes, want change as well.

Last Saturday through Tuesday, thousands of Bay Area residents flocked to the Oakland Coliseum, where they received free medical, dental, and vision services – services that they couldn’t otherwise afford.

KALW’s Erica Mu was there.

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ERICA MU: The scene at the Coliseum this morning, keep in mind that it’s 5am, well, it looks a little bit like a Black Friday sale, but the stakes are much higher, and you can tell because of the numbers.

ASHLEY MARANDA: My number today is 338.

ROBERT HANDY: Yeah, I have 288.

DEBBIE NOBREGA: 274.

DAVID LOPEZ-RODRIGUEZ: 349.

AL WALDEN: Yes, 291.

RICH BOGNOV: 253.

Al Walden, Robert Handy, Robin Rattan, Ashley Maranda, Debbie Nobrega, David Lopez-Rodriguez, and Rich Bognov are just a few of the hundreds of patiently waiting people crowded around the stadium’s entrance. They’ve come from Sacramento, Vallejo, San Francisco, Oakland, San Leandro – pretty much any place in the Bay Area and surrounding counties. And they’re all here for the same thing: free medical, dental, and vision services.

CLINIC VOLUNTEER: Okay now, in just a few minutes we’re gonna start calling the numbers, so it will be in numerical order.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 1: So if I stick around…

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 2: He doesn’t have a ticket.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 1: I don’t have a ticket at all.

CLINIC VOLUNTEER: You’re not going to get one…

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 1: Okay, thank you sir.

CLINIC VOLUNTEER: Number six. Number seven. Number eight…

This was the scene every morning at the Oakland Coliseum from Saturday to Tuesday – a four-day mass free clinic put on by Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit that provides free medical care to people in isolated areas around the world and in the States. The organization usually provides care in extremely impoverished parts of the world, but it was invited to the Bay Area by the state’s association of oral surgeons. With the help of thousands of medical and administrative volunteers, more than 3,000 patients are being served this week.

But by Tuesday, many of the medical volunteers have gone back to their regular jobs, and fewer volunteers means fewer patients can get through the doors.

CLINIC VOLUNTEER: 281. 282. 283. 284.

Patients start filing into the lobby, where they’re greeted by rows upon rows of tables, dentist chairs, optometric stations, waiting areas, and curtained physicians’ booths. They’re admitted in groups of 25, but at 7:00am, there are only two optometrists here to receive them.

DR. JULIE FORISTER: So the back of your eye looks pretty good, I’m not seeing anything significant.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 2: Excellent, but on this eye here I’m …

FORISTER: I’m Dr. Julie Forister, I’m from San Francisco, I work at U.C. Berkeley Optometry School. We already have about 20, 30 patients waiting for us already, and this is only seven o’clock in the morning. Our vision exam is in assemblyline style, so my job is to be the gatekeeper to screen out the healthy patients so they don’t have to wait around for hours just to get their basic eye exams. It just feels really good to be able to help people. And it’s instant gratification to help such a large amount of people in such a short amount of time.

Dr. Julie Forister explains that most of the patients she’s seen are those who fell through the cracks – people who have Medi-Cal or Medicare. Budget cuts to these programs mean more people simply forego dental and eye care. And when they’re lucky, they end up at places like the free clinic. Clinic organizer Pam Congdon explains.

PAM CONGDON: Well, if you’re in the clinic, you’ll see how many people are there, so you’ll see that there’s that need. We have so many people here and all of the budget cuts, there have been so many programs eliminated where people who used to get some kind of care that couldn’t afford insurance – those aren’t available any longer.

STAN BROCK: It’s very, very consistent. The only thing that changes is the geography and what type of building you have.

Stan Brock is the founder of Remote Area Medical. He says that the scene in the Coliseum is pretty typical.

BROCK: But it doesn’t matter where we go in the United States, there are going to be very large crowds that come out and they all want the same type of services, predominantly dentistry and vision care, which they can’t get by going to the emergency room. So their only recourse at that point is to come to one of our events.

The Tzu Chi Foundation has worked with Brock and Remote Area Medical at various sites. Executive Director Mingjhing Shieh says that large crowds point to a struggling economy.

MINGJHING SHIEH: Very simple things like, cleaning teeth cleaning and routine checkup, very basic medical service, they don’t have those kind of service when they don’t have a job.

Mingjhing Shieh walks me past the 89 dental chairs set up in the center of the 20,000 square foot clinic. Hygienists hover over patients already reclined in the seats, mouths wide open. We walk past two packed waiting areas before spilling outside, where a mobile dental unit hums loudly. Inside, ticketholder number 10 is in the middle of getting her teeth cleaned.

DR. ANDREA BERRYHILL: We’re here at 6:00am for orientation, and by 6:30am, we’re rolling.

That’s Dr. Andrea Berryhill.

BERRYHILL: I’m from Fresno, California. And I’m a children’s dentist there, but this clinic, we’re doing everything.

Dr. Berryhill is cleaning Andrea Hays’s teeth this morning.

BERRYHILL: Basically, we’re trying to address acute needs. We can’t take every patient and treat them comprehensively, we just don’t have the manpower and the capability. Like the gal we just worked on – pretty good dental care on her mouth. She had some restorations that were nicely done at that time. They run into hard times, they are now unemployed, they lose their insurance, we don’t have adult Medi-Cal for dental in California right now, so adult patients aren’t being taken care of.

ANDREA HAYS: My teeths is all nice and clean. I feel like I can smile better. But my voice is gone! (laughs)

So, ticketholder number 10 is on her way out the Coliseum’s doors by 8:00am. But outside, there are still hundreds waiting to see if they can get their hands on a number, including:

ROSE SANCHEZ: Rose Sanchez from Vallejo, California. I got here at 4:30 this morning. We drove here from Vallejo. No, I don’t have a number. We didn’t make it on time for the number. So it’s God willing, we’ll get in. Hopefully we will.

We have no insurance. I was employed and my employer lost the lease to his company, so then I became unemployed and I’ve been unemployed for over a year. And my husband was unemployed and then he just, well he’s been employed for a year, he went back to work thank God. It’s just a sign of the times – you have a job and employers, they don’t offer it. You know? What are you gonna do? You either pay your mortgage and your insurance and your bills, or it’s healthcare. So what are you gonna do? Pay your bills and your healthcare suffers, so, you take your choice. You know?

MU: Well you look like you have great teeth so...

SANCHEZ: Oh! Thank you! But I do need dental work! (laughs)

Most of the patients leaving the Coliseum this morning don’t have a long-term plan for care after the free clinic – mostly because they can’t afford it. But at least they walk away with a badly-needed filling or pair of glasses. And if things go according to the organizer’s plan, the free clinic will be back again next year.

In Oakland, I’m Erica Mu for Crosscurrents.

Are you unemployed or underemployed and struggling to find healthcare? If you have health insurance, are you happy with it? Let us know on our Facebook page.