Young Turks in the Free Clinics

John Dittmer (2009). The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care. New York: Bloomsbury Press, pp. 224-227.

We were the New Left in medicine. Subjective, principled, angry, often arrogant, we felt no ties with the past. ---Fitzhugh Mullan

The three most common types of clinics were the so-called hippie cinics that were aimed at young people and dealing primarily with drug problems, those clinics initiated by community organizations, and clinics opened by groups with a radical political agenda, like the Black Panthers.

The HEAD clinic (Health Emergency Aid Dispensary) in the New Orleans French Quarter served a young, mostly itinerant clientele. Initiated by the New Orleans MCHR in late 1969 and governed by a local board, HEAD included a pharmacy and a complete emergency laboratory staffed by volunteers. Open four days a week, it had a twenty-four-hour hotline that referred patients to other sources of assistance when the clinic was closed. HEAD filled a need unmet by local health providers. "We haven't seen one person yet who could have afforded a private doctor," reported MCHR chair Dr. Jeoff Gordon, "and most of them can't get into Charity Hospital except in emergency cases because they haven't lived in New Orleans six months to meet the residency requirement." Moreover, he said, "People with drug-related problems stay away from hospitals because of the risks of arrest and the unsympathetic reception they get there."

June Finer was the prime mover in establishing the Judson Mobile Health Unit, a fifty-foot trailer parked in the heart of New York's Lower East Side. "We're here to give health care to any East Village kid who needs it," said Finer. "We don't ask questions and we don't make judgments." Serving mostly impoverished blacks and Hispanics, the Mobile Health Unit offered free treatment for a range of ailments, from rat bites and cuts to venerial disease and bad drug trips. The clinic provided immunizations, pregnancy diagnosis, and counseling and referral for legal, welfare, and housing problems, as well as a remedial reading program, informal day care, and a youth "rap group" for neighborhood kids.

There was also a political component to the clinic. Community organizer Paul Ramos noted that most of the health problems they encountered stemmed from the oppressive poverty in the East Village slums. "Part of our job is to make people politically aware of why they are sick: overcrowding in their houses, miserable garbage pickup, a poor health system, and welfare which doesn't give them enough money to live on." Finer believed that it was the efforts of community organizers like Ramos and the Job Corps workers assigned to the clinic that made it an example of "guerrilla medicine." "Without them," she said, "the unit would have been just another straight health clinic, a dull, moderate success. The generation we're trying to reach is a revolutionary generation."

[...]

One of the most successful Panther clinics was the People's Free Medical Care Center in Chicago, inspired by Fred Hampton. Its opening had been delayed by his death, and the center's director, nineteen-year-old Ronald "Doc" Satchell, had himself been shot five times in that police attack on Panther headquarters. The center was "bright, warmly decorated and well-equipped without frills as an efficient out-patient service," thanks to the work of local black carpenters, who donated their services. The Chicago MCHR had assessed each member five dollars to support the center, and supervised the schedules of the more than 150 nurses, technicians, physicians, and health science students who volunteered to work in the evenings and on Sundays. Quentin Young recalls that Satchell demanded professionalism in appearance as well as service. Seeing Dr. Young make his rounds wearing white coat and tie, Satchell instructed the young medical volunteers to get rid of their Levis and sneakers and come to work professionally attired.

The medical establishment's reaction to the free clinics was mixed. In Chicago the Board of Health invoked a thirty-one-year-old ordinance and charged that four clinics did not meet official standards and thus were operating illegally. The offending clinics just happened to be the ones operated by the Black Panthers, the Young Lords (Puerto Rican), the Young Patriots (Appalachian whites), and the Latin American Defense Organization---all militant ethnic groups. The cases were thrown out after a judge ruled that the definition of a clinic was "so vague and indefinite as to be completely unenforceable."

On the other hand, many local medical societies and hospitals welcomed the clinics, a development that MCHR reformer Tom Bodenheimer found problematic. In a 1972 article, the California physician wrote that "in the five years since the first free clinic opened, the free clinic movement has gained the support and blessing of the health establishment---drug companies, medical schools, even the Nixon administration." Bodenheimer concluded that the "general effect of most free clinics is to perpetuate and assist establishment health care institutions to continue in their anti-patient policies." The hospitals were using the free clinics as "an escape valve---the free clinics see patients these establishment institutions don't want to deal with." And while there were exceptions, "the day-to-day work of most free clinics is no challenge to the health care structure."