I have seen Ethiopians, Somalis, Kurds, West Africans, Chinese, Afghanistanis, and Bosnians. Less than a quarter of our patients have Medicaid, almost none have private health insurance, and all are poor. I chose to work at Cardozo, because, having practiced inner-city medicine before, I knew that I liked it, and I knew that I was needed. Moreover, I wanted to see for myself what the forces of medical privatization meant for our poorest citizens and neighborhoods. Put differently, if the Cardozo, health center didn't continue to receive several million dollars a year of federal funding based on the vintage 1960's Office of Economic Opportunity idea of a community health center, there would be no payroll, no receptionists, no nurses, no doctors, and no medical care.
Government funding remains the operative principle of health care finance in our neighborhood.
Without the programs legislated and managed by the federal government, there would be no medical care at 14th and Irving. The commercial market hasn't found our patients and doesn't seem to be looking for them. Practice at Upper Cardozo isn't for everyone. The Loan Repayment Program provides debt reduction for clinicians who commit to work in underserved areas, while the military medical school trains a certain number of Public Health Service physicians who then do their military duty in settings such as Cardozo. My colleagues at the clinic, and others like them, are superb examples of what government incentives can do to move doctors into settings they might not otherwise choose or be able to afford.