Why not some good news?
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has chosen Amy Johnson, a Little Rock lawyer, as one of this year's community health leader award winners.
As the first executive director of the Arkansas Access to Justice Commission, Johnson works to help low-income Arkansans overcome legal barriers that perpetuate poverty. In that role, she has helped raise more than $2.1 million to support the provision of free legal aid to low-income people. She also served on an advisory committee that oversaw the formation of the state’s first hospital-based medical-legal partnership.Working with local clergy, she helped to establish the Harmony Health Clinic in Little Rock, a free clinic for the working poor—people who don’t qualify for Medicaid or Medicare and do not make enough money to afford health insurance. Harmony Health Clinic provides local medical and dental professionals with the opportunity to serve their community, help others, and volunteer their time and services to improve the quality of the health of their neighbors.
... According to Johnson, most employers in Arkansas are small businesses that cannot afford to provide health insurance for their workers. Given this, Johnson said, there is no limit to the number of free health clinics that could be opened in her community. “We opened our clinic doors at the beginning of the economic downturn in 2008—patients just came flooding in. Our clinic, like many other nonprofits that serve low-income families, struggles daily with an overwhelming need for the services and a real lack of resources to provide them.”
The clinic has 2,000 patients, the vast majority of whom suffer from chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity. The care it provides is crucial to avoiding bigger health problems later. The results: There have been approximately 1,000 fewer emergency room visits and many families have been saved from the financial ruin that often follows an uninsured hospital stay.
There's more. And more need. And likely to be still more need if Republicans take control of government and begin slashing.