Kenys Bautista arrived before midnight. She had put off medical and dental checkups for three years.
Alma Walton drove into the Takoma Park, Maryland, parking lot around 1:30 a.m. She cracked a filling over the summer, but hadn’t been able to get treated.
She was 59th in line.
“I wanted to make sure I could get in,” Walton said.
They were all there to seek help at a free pop-up clinic only eight miles northeast of the U.S. Capitol, during a political season punctuated by affordability issues. Polls showed high health care costs were a top concern among voters.
Dozens of people slept in their cars outside the Takoma Academy, a Christian high school, to secure limited spots for free health, dental or vision care, according to organizers and interviews with patients. By 4 a.m. about 80 cars had arrived.
The clinic last month was organized by Remote Area Medical (RAM), a Tennessee-based nonprofit that says it has provided free health care to more than a million patients over its 40-year history. The clinics initially targeted rural areas, such as in Appalachia, traditionally home to some of the poorest and least insured communities in the country.
In recent years, the organization has branched out into urban and suburban areas — such as around the nation’s capital, Baltimore and Philadelphia — where having insurance is more common. The clinics rely on doctors and dentists donating their time.
Around 11 a.m., Walton, who lives in Camp Springs, Maryland, was in one of the 30 dental treatment tents set up in the large gymnasium, having her filling replaced.
“You got here just in time,” John Renzi, a dentist volunteering at the clinic, told her just before he began drilling. “Any longer and this tooth would have been a goner.”
While most patients at the clinic were uninsured, 1 in 4 had health coverage, such as through Medicare or their employer. But many said just having coverage was not enough, because it left them with unaffordable out-of-pocket costs.
“I never thought I would need a clinic like this, but it’s gotten so expensive in the world,” Walton said. She has Medicare, but routine dental care is not a standard benefit.
She was one of 467 patients at the weekend clinic. Most received dental or medical care, or both. Ninety-nine got vision exams, and many left with new glasses.
More than 300 dental, medical and vision professionals volunteered along with members of the U.S. Public Health Service.
According to a survey by RAM, almost 40 percent of patients said they had not seen a dental provider — other than one provided at a RAM clinic — in at least two years.
And nearly two-thirds said they did not have a usual place for seeking care other than a hospital emergency room.
Dana Bensinger, a nurse specialist working at the medical care clinic, said many patients had high blood pressure or diabetes. They were given prescriptions for a 90-day supply of pills and told to connect with community health centers or clinics where they can get free or low-cost primary care.
“We have seen a lot of folks who lose insurance or are not able to keep it, and so they can’t get their prescriptions renewed,” he said.
Many patients showed up to get a tooth extraction — and with it, relief from persistent pain.
“We call it point-and-pull dentistry,” said Tom Ritter, a retired dentist who was triaging patients. “You point to the tooth you want out, and we take it out.”
The dilemma, he said, is patients often need multiple teeth pulled and the volunteer dentists have only limited time for each patient. “We have to spread the love around because we have a busy schedule,” Ritter said.
Michel Boudreaux, an associate professor at the University of Maryland Department of Health Policy and Management, said the RAM clinic highlighted the growing difficulty people with and without health insurance face.
“Even in this suburban county there are a lot of uninsured people struggling with affordability and insured people struggling with high deductibles and co-pays,” he said.
Census data shows the median household income for the area where the clinic was held tops $108,000 and about 94 percent of people have health insurance. Participants came from the area but were also from farther afield.
Boudreaux called it “disheartening” to hear about the desperation on display in the parking lot overnight.
“It’s really sad that a lot of people like me had to sleep in their car just to see a doctor or dentist because we do not have health insurance,” Bautista said. She works as a payroll specialist for a small company but does not get any health benefits.
Having a government job with benefits was once seen as a way of immunizing one’s family from rising health costs.
Cheromie Johnson, who works for the District of Columbia, said that recent dental work left her with a $12,000 bill.
She came to the clinic with her 6-year-old son, Cairo, to get eye exams. She was hoping they would each get a new pair of glasses.
“This is very important, especially for him in school, and I drive, so we both need to see clearly,” Johnson said. She estimated the free vision care would save them more than $1,000.
Asked what this busy free clinic said about the state of U.S. health care, she said: “It’s poor, and it needs to be revamped. But we all know that.”
John Osborn, dental director for RAM, was taking a break on a balcony that overlooked the gymnasium, which was peppred with treatment tents and mobile equipment that had transformed the space into something from the TV show “M.A.S.H.” from decades ago. He wasn’t surprised to see the outpouring of people in need. Over the past 35 years, he’s seen similar scenes at other clinics.
He said he wished members of Congress could have witnessed it as well.
“It would have been nice for them to see what people have to do to get health care,” Osborn said.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.
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