How much
do all these things cost? The highest costs for us are the fuel for all these
trucks and donated aircraft when we use them and, of course, buying dental
supplies and eyeglass lenses that we grind into the new eyeglasses that we
make. So, there is considerable expense involved but what we don't need are the
expense of renting buildings and paying for police and security personnel, but
sometimes those charges confront us. It's the nature of the beast.
You bring up a good point - the actual
dollars and cents required to run your programs. How do you come up with it?
Well, in the first place, we're a 501 (c) (3) charity so contributions to this
organization are tax-deductible. And really the whole machine works on those
generous donations from the public - the $10 and the $20 donations in support
of what we do. And we get some foundation support, I'm happy to say. I wish we
had corporate support;we've had some nice support periodically from FedEx,
which is a Tennessee corporation.
But in large part, we do not have any
corporate support. Obviously, we need an oil company in the worst way, given
the amount of fuel that we're burning all the time. So the support of this
organization is from the good-natured American public and those foundations
that see fit to provide some support as well.
At the end of the fourth and final segment of our interview, we'll include links to your website, so people who want to read more, volunteer, and
contribute, can do so easily. Do you anticipate a day anytime soon when your
services will no longer be needed in the United States?
I would indeed hope so but I'm not too optimistic of that. The reform measures
that are under considerable discussion in Washington, when they do come to some
agreement and legislation is passed, which I hope will include allowing doctors
to cross state lines but there seems to be some considerable doubt as to whether
anybody is interested in that, other than us. What I'm hearing is that it's
going to be three or four years before these reforms come on stream.
Then, there's the question of educating the public so that they know what's available to them and the very big question is: will it cover vision care, eyeglasses that is, and dental care for these people, or will it just cover primary health care? And if, for example, everyone is required to buy insurance, will they be required to pay premiums to get some of this specialty care like the dentistry and the vision? And so there are a lot of things to be considered here, it's going to be a number of years before we don't need to do what we're doing in this country and we can go back and concentrate on places like Haiti where desperation is just the order of the day.
In other countries that have
universal health care, do they also cover dental and vision?
I'm not an expert, by any means, on any of the other countries, even though I'm
from Britain. You know, in 1944, at the height of World War II, what we had in
Britain was a coalition bipartisan government under Winston Churchill where
making decisions was a whole lot simpler because of the bipartisan nature and
the extreme desire and resolution to win World War II. But at that time, we had
49.7 million inhabitants of that island of which I was one, and there was a
great problem with health care, given casualties from the war, etc.
etc. So, the government mandated universal health care. That quest was
addressed by Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, and it became the law of the
land.
Now, interestingly enough, you fast forward 66 years to the present day, to the richest country in the world and one that is not engaged in World War II or III, and you have about the same number of people as existed in Britain during that terrible time, about another 47-49 million. So, can we find a solution to at least providing the care that those 40-odd million people need, given the fact that there are a lot of opposite interests in this country, not only in Washington, both sides of the House, but also business interests and so forth? This makes it, of course, much more difficult that a bipartisan, coalition government faced with World War II and perhaps where the arguments were less uncontrollable. How much this is all going to cost is way, way above my head.
Let's pause here. When we return, Stan will talk about how he keeps up the grueling pace, his prescription for improved national health, and RAM's recent run-in with Emergency Room billing. Stay tuned!
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