Our Mission

Our mission is to address the health and wellness of the uninsured people in our community by providing free, compassionate and appropriate medical care.

The Need for a Free Clinic

Our society is experiencing a health-care crisis. Nationally more than 46 million people have no health insurance. This number increases at a rate of approximately one million per year. An initial assessment revealed that about 16 percent of the population in Otsego and Delaware counties has no health insurance. This affects our whole community. According to the Rural Assistance Center, a rural health and human services information resource center, the uninsured have “higher out-of-pocket costs for care; poorer health outcomes than their insured counterparts; and a greater likelihood that easily treatable ailments will go untreated and become serious medical problems.” These people are not necessarily unemployed; they are the working poor – restaurant staff, small business owners, day laborers, artists, and housecleaners, to name a few. Ultimately the costs are borne by everyone – they are passed along in terms of lost work hours, higher health insurance costs, and greater community health risks.

No community truly can be healthy if a significant portion of the population is excluded from basic medical services. In the absence of a national universal health care policy, concerned citizens need to find other ways to provide the medically under-served with the health care services they lack. Creating a free health clinic isn’t simply the ethical course of action – it’s the practical course of action.