Two years ago Missouri passed the Volunteer Health Services Act, a law which allows licensed out-of-state medical providers to deliver charitable care to Missourians without undue regulatory burdens. With the VHSA’s passage, Missouri joined only a handful of states, including neighboring Tennessee and Illinois, who have passed similar health care reforms. Make no mistake: support for charity clinics like RAM’s is bipartisan.
Yet the relative rarity of common sense reforms like the VHSA was hammered home late last year, when one of the largest providers of interstate charity care — Remote Area Medical — was blocked from serving thousands of patients in New York.
New York state health officials have stopped a nonprofit group from providing free medical care to thousands of patients lacking health insurance during a four-day dental conference that starts Friday.
The nonprofit, Remote Area Medical, had [brought millions of dollars worth of mobile units and supplies] and enlisted hundreds of volunteer doctors and other medical workers to offer a range of health services, including dental care, new eyeglasses and other services. The group had planned to treat about 7,000 patients at the New York [State] event.
In September, the New York State Department of Health told the volunteer group, founded in 1985, that it could not treat patients at the conference unless it partnered with an established, state-licensed medical organization.
I have a hard time believing that the bureaucrats at New York’s Department of Health actually believe the 7,000 patients who would have received care from RAM are better off without that treatment. More to the point, there is something deeply troubling and inherently immoral about a state health care regime that actively denies its citizens charitable care from licensed health care providers. New York should follow the lead of about a dozen other states and remove the state’s apparent “local partnership” requirement for providing charitable care inside its borders.
A shameful spectacle like this should never happen again in the Empire State — or for that matter, anywhere in the United States.
