If a multi-million dollar corporation opened minor care clinics in select locations where flu shots were available daily, vaccines were administered and a variety of non-critical services were available at prices so low even the poorest American could pay out of pocket (though most insurance plans are excepted) you’d expect the caring citizens of the left would applaud the company’s dedication to good corporate citizenship.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino embarked on a highly public campaign yesterday to block CVS Corp. and other retailers from opening medical clinics inside their stores, an effort that exposed a rift between Menino and the state’s public health commissioner, a longtime ally.
Menino blasted state regulators for paving the way Wednesday for the in-store clinics, which are designed to provide treatment for sore throats, poison ivy, and other minor illnesses.
The decision by the state Public Health Council, “jeopardizes patient safety,” Menino said in a written statement. “Limited service medical clinics run by merchants in for-profit corporations will seriously compromise quality of care and hygiene. Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong.”
In a separate letter, Menino urged members of the city’s Public Health Commission to consider barring the clinics from Boston. CVS executives said they plan to open 25 to 30 MinuteClinics in Greater Boston before the end of the year, although they have not specified how many of those will be within the city’s limits.
The Boston Public Health Commission spent nearly an hour discussing the impending arrival of the clinics and ways they could potentially be stopped.
The panel took no action, but instructed the health agency’s attorney to investigate whether it could adopt regulations forbidding stores with clinics from selling tobacco products, forcing them to make an untenable financial choice. The city says 31 CVS stores and 56 other pharmacies in Boston have city-issued licenses to sell tobacco.
In a statement issued last night, executives of MinuteClinics said they “would be happy to talk to Mayor Menino about any of his concerns.”
“We at MinuteClinic are committed to providing convenient, affordable access to quality health care,” the statement said.
Ignore for a moment the Mayor’s astounding ignorance about the quality of health care in his mythical non-profit health care system (the one where doctors work for free). Minor illness clinics are a life saver for poor people and relieve the burden of non-essential care complaints from the municipal health care system.
I grew up poor and as I struggled through college and grad school, clinics like DOCS and the ones CVS want to put in helped me to afford to treat minor conditions and get my needed vaccines without having to skip meals. These sorts of programs help poor people and once the pink eye/poison ivy/minor burn treatments are taken care of in CVS, emergency rooms will thin out and be better equipped to handle emergencies.
Don’t laugh, I once took a kid from the Brooklyn YMCA to the emergency room for stitches. Bleeding out of her eyelid, this brave little girl waited in the emergency room for at least three hours. Probably more because I left when her family finally showed up. The majority of people in front of her were people with minor injuries and sicknesses.
Check their website and see how useful this service is. Too useful for Democrats I guess, who see their pet issue slipping away as the free market offers better solutions than socialized medicine.
So who really cares about poor people?
h/t Hot Air