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The Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic

By David Hale - posted Wednesday, 15 April 2020


You may never have heard of this place. The city it is in, LA, is far more famous. The same can be said about the part of town it is in, Hollywood. The street it is in is even more famous, world-famous in fact, Sunset Boulevard.

The Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic is a medical centre that provides free healthcare. It is the vision of Medicare for all, basically realised. A GP clinic where you can see a doctor, do tests, and all for free.  A novelty in a country where free healthcare is not the norm.

The problem is that a revolution sounds more interesting than some clinic.

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That revolution, promised by Senator Sanders, is to completely bring down the current healthcare system to build in its place something new, something historic, and something indeed truly revolutionary.

Sanders' promise is something that comes across as far more exciting than merely supporting some clinic.

In Australia, we technically have Medicare for all, but it seems to take something grand to make us do more in health as well.  The Close the Gap campaign, to end the unacceptable gap in health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, is a case in point.

It was historic, it was something grand, and motivated people to get onboard. Get onboard to address an issue that had existed for a long time.

Simply asking people to support charities to help end that disadvantage was not enough.

There was also the issue of medical research funding. It seemed to get much attention because of the Australian government’s announcement in 2014, of a new kind of funding model.

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The creation of a medical research fund, that by 2020-2021 should become the biggest medical research endowment fund in the world, we were told – though, actually, there are bigger ones. 

Yes, it is all very exciting, but the government simply increasing funding to medical research would have done the trick. Australians donating say $100-200 every year to medical research would have done the trick as well. In fact, it would amount to more money than the fund’s final projected annual giving rate.

It just may not have been as newsworthy as a new fund.

The argument is the same for tackling poverty. Senator Sanders focuses on going after the big bad wolves of Wall Street and other world-famous billionaires - and that motivates people. For us Australians, the attacks on the big end of town, hating Gina Reinhart can motivate.

Boring, but useful measures to address poverty, like financial budgeting, tax changes, improving case management models for the homeless, not so much. 

In health, it may simply come down to supporting charities like the Royal Flying Doctor Service or, in America, options such as St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

They provide not only free primary care, but all care to children, the costs of operations, specialists, as well as accommodation for the family. Free transportation is also provided as is food, and food not just for the patient.

What St Jude needs is not a Sander’s revolution, but monthly financial donors - boringly giving monthly by direct debit.

Many people believe that free healthcare is a right but we also need them to support the implementation of that right by giving to the groups providing free healthcare to those in need.

We should not need a Close the Gap or a new fund to get us excited about doing it and the same can be said about tackling any social ill.  It does not always have to come down to doing something grand.

For the 2019 election, the ALP received over 11 million dollars in donations.

P­eople, at least some of them, may have been caught up in the big promises being made to reshape Australia:  promises to use the law to force up wages, remove decades old negative gearing for existing homes, and review the amount given to those not working resulting in the first real increase in decades. 

Then there was the universal early education policy as well - the claim that for the first time, every single 3-year-old would have access to subsided 15 hours a week of early education.

Most of these commitments did not come to pass.

The more than 11 million dollars, if instead donated to charities, to help workers, the unemployed, and kids would have achieved more than a lost election. 

In the case of Senator Sanders, everyday donors have given more than 98 million to his campaign. A major focus of that campaign is ensuring Medicare for all.  

Senator Sander’s supporters could make Medicare a dream for all, ironically, just by not supporting the Senator, but rather donating their money to domestic health charities like the clinic or St Jude.

Yet those things don’t tend to get the same amount of energy from people.

Yes, it is true that government has a greater capacity than philanthropy in tackling unaffordable healthcare and addressing poverty. This is the case in both America and Australia. Yet, philanthropy may have a greater chance of getting it done, with your help. 

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About the Author

David Hale is an Anglican University Lay Chaplain, staff worker for the Australian Student Christian Movement and a member of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship.

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All articles by David Hale

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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