Remote chance of help...

Pop-up free health centres offer aid to the uninsured amid crisis in richest country in the world

IN the early hours of Sunday morning, 48 hours before America went to the polls, lines of people began queuing at the First Baptist Church on Main Street, in Clinton, Tennessee. The parking lot had been filling since midnight.

Inside the church's gymnasium, rows of cubicles built over the preceding days were ready to receive over 300 patients looking for free dental, eye and medical care from the nonprofit organisation Remote. 이 Area Medical.

"Free dental, vision and medical services are provided on a first-come, first-served basis," the notice read. "All services are free and open to the public. No ID required."

This is the reality of the healthcare crisis in America, where there is no free National Health Service - and a staggering 27 million people have no health insurance to pay for treatment. Millions more are "underinsured" meaning they can't access treatment.

Now, President Trump's reelection threatens even Obamacare, a Democrat attempt at helping the poorest Americans access health services.

While in Britain, queues grow for dentists, in America, desperate people are driving three days across state lines, sleeping in cars and on mattresses and queuing for hours in the sun and rain for free, pop-up medical treatment.

"When you speak to people ALL SM Nurses i who come to RAM events, it's not just about the medical treatment," says RAM's CEO Jeff Eastman.

"It's about being treated as a human being. There is no shame. It's neighbours helping neighbours.

It restores people's faith in human kindness." RAM is the legacy of an extraordinary British man, Stan Brock an intrepid former British cowboy and maverick care health provider who died from cancer in 2018, aged 82. Born in Preston, Stan found his fame wrestling snakes on the long-running US TV show Wild Kingdom, which at its height, had 32 million viewers.