The Department of Health is claiming there was no way for this to happen safely, but how did they manage to work around it in so many other states? This is just unconscionable:
(Reuters) – 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 raised $3 million 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 Sate 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.
Despite last-minute efforts, the partnership could not be arranged in time, and the nonprofit group said it found out this week that the state would not waive the requirement.
“This was incredibly disappointing and will mean that thousands of patients won’t get the care they desperately need,” said Stan Brock, the founder of Remote Area Medical.
“In addition, the resources we spent setting up this event in New York City won’t be available to serve other patients in other locations,” he said. “We wasted time and money.”
The Greater New York Dental Meeting, held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, is billed by organizers as the largest conference of its kind in the United States with more than 54,000 attendees.
Brock said state health officials told him during negotiations that the free health services his organization provides were not needed.
Thanks to Leesburg Medical Malpractice Attorneys, Price Benowitz LLP.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” Stan Brock is a dumbass and “state health officials” are either out of touch with reality or are trying to cover their own asses. Why wouldn’t this group partner with an established, state-licensed medical organization as its first order of business? Who wants a bunch of unqualified do-gooders riding into town and performing free medical care on the unsuspecting public? Aren’t regulations a good thing? There are probably a million groups who would have sponsored them. How much of that $3 million dollars that they raised went into administrative expenses? What kind of salary does Brock pull down every year? If this is the kind of shoddy work Stan does he should be fired.
Of course it’s patently obvious that health care cannot be administered without someone, anyone, making a profit. After all isn’t that why regulations exist, to protect the 1%’s profit? And obviously, since these services were ‘unneeded,’ it was just the result of poor communication to the prospective 7,000+ patients about where they could access their needed healthcare.
Some of the regulations exist so that you and I can’t pretend to know what we’re doing, call ourselves doctors, and go around cutting people’s tonsils out. Or practicing law. Or any of a hundred other occupations that require some skill to perform. If we had a universal single-payer health care system instead of the ridiculous ACA for-profit health care system that we now have, every one of those 7000 people could be properly cared for on an ongoing basis. Medicare for all.
Way to go Gov Cuomo! So glad they have a Democrat at the head of that state, and not some mean old Republican.