Behind a partition at Seattle Center’s Exhibition Hall Seattle Center’s Exhibition Hall, dental drills wheezed. Couple Andrea and Xavier waited patiently on the other side.
Touching her left cheek, Andrea said she’d felt pain in her mouth off and on for two years. She suspected a cavity. Her teeth throbbed when she ate sweets. She’s put off care because she either hasn’t had a job or hasn’t had a job with good insurance. Her husband, Xavier, needed a root canal his insurance wouldn’t cover until he hit the sixth month mark at his childcare job. A drink of water, or even cold air, sends pain shooting up the side of his face. He was also here for a flu shot. As anyone who spends time with children knows, they are very efficient germ factories.
Four days a year, Seattle Center becomes the largest free community-driven health clinic in the country. By Sunday afternoon, volunteer doctors, nurses, dentists, ophthalmologists and other medical specialists at this pop-up will have seen around 3,500 patients.
This project of Seattle Center and the Seattle Center Foundation doesn’t come cheap. Clinic founder Julia Colson, who works for Seattle Center, told The Stranger by email that she raises $1.5 million a year for the clinic’s cash expenses. The clinic also works to secure the donation of services, supplies, and other resources.
How badly is this care needed? The line started Wednesday night. Andrea and Xavier arrived at 5:15 a.m., 15 minutes before volunteers began to hand out first come, first serve tickets. They were given dental tickets 389 and 390.
“It kind of reflects how it’s a much needed service,” Andrea says. “The way that people are very desperate to get their spot.”
Karen Hays, a nurse and midwife who serves as one of the clinic’s medical directors, said those desperate people come from as far as Oregon and Alaska. Because patients can’t get dental and vision care on the same day, people will sleep in their cars “three, four days in a row.”
Hays has volunteered for every clinic since the first 11 years ago. Back then, organizers assumed that most of their patients would be from outside the system, people without homes, jobs, or legal status. They also assumed the Affordable Care Act would’ve worked enough magic by now that thousands of people wouldn’t have their only yearly check-up in a sports arena or opera hall. They were wrong on both counts.
“What we saw was the working poor,” she says. “People who have jobs. They work full time. They may even have insurance, but their insurance has no pharmacy benefit. Their insurance doesn’t pay for labs, or [they’ve] got a $3,000 deductible… It’s bare bones, catastrophic only.”
“I mean, look around,” she says. She turned her head to the waiting area from the couch where we were sitting. Most of the people, many slumped over and tired-looking, were working-age adults. They saw elderly people, but most had social security and Medicare and tended to find care; the state did a pretty good job insuring kids, she explained.
You’d think it’d be a real glum place. But there were a lot of smiles, even from Xavier. I haven’t seen anyone smile before a root canal before.
“Everybody here is like, really awesome,” Xavier says. “All the volunteers are really kind. It’s been a lot of waiting, which makes sense, because there’s a lot of people here who care.”
Mike Brush, who has forsaken his obvious calling, dentistry, to become an ophthalmologist at Kaiser Permanente, directs eye care at the clinic. He’s seen the same patients come back year after year because it’s a place they can make sure they’re healthy, no questions asked, and no documentation necessary.
This year, that fact had Brush worried. He feared the clinic could become a target for ICE. There were also worries the specter of the agency could dissuade immigrants from coming.
“I mean, if they walked in here, they would probably try and take half the people out because [they spoke] foreign languages, or they’re not white,” he said. “I would be challenged not to get involved if something like that would happen.”
Signs on the door reminded anyone reading, like say, ICE agents, that this is private building and, today, a healthcare facility. (Though, ICE is known to barrel into hospitals and clinics. Even world class news avoiders would’ve seen that on The Pitt).
The clinic is open through Sunday. If you decide to go, expect the same lines. You can find more information here.
