Stan Brock

All three broadcast networks this week have reported on the charity Remote Area Medical's offer of free medical care at a temporary facility in Los Angeles, citing the arrival of many patients as a sign of how many Americans there are who need "free health care," and even relaying the words of program volunteers who compared the health care challenges of some Americans to problems in Third World countries like Guatemala and India.

But only by watching ABC's Good Morning America did one see a soundbite of program founder Stan Brock informing viewers that the free clinic does not even screen patients to learn if they really are in need financially. Brock:

It's first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked, no financial information required. There are a lot of good programs in this country, but they tend to have hurdles that the patient has to leap through in order to get the care.

Reporters seemed shocked that thousands of people would stand in line for hours to receive hundreds -- or even thousands -- of dollars worth of free medical care.

At the top of Thursday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric used a free clinic in Inglewood, California to push for health care reform: "Tonight in the battle over health care, they are on the front lines....we’re going to show you why many believe reform is desperately needed. These are just some of the tens of thousands of Americans who need health care but have no insurance or not enough of it."

In the report that followed, correspondent Bill Whitaker described the organization that set up the free health clinic: "This program is run by Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit group established 24 years ago to take modern medicine to the third world. Today, they do some 40 multi-day free clinics a year, 65% of them now in the U.S." Whitaker spoke to one volunteer physician, who compared the need for health care in the U.S. to that of third world nations: "Here at home, we have as much a need as I do when I travel to the most remote areas of India, and that’s very heartbreaking."

On March 2 of last year, CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a story on Remote Area Medical in which anchor Scott Pelley made similar third world comparisons when discussing the American health care system: "Recently, we heard about an American relief organization that air drops doctors and medicine into the jungles of the Amazon....But these days, that’s not the Amazon – this charity founded to help people who can’t reach medical care now finds itself throwing America a lifeline."