Back-Alley Medicine? Uninsured Seek New Health Options

In the garage of Ram Chaudhuri's Santa Clara, Calif., home (not his real name), patients line up to seek medical care from the elderly machinist turned self-taught homeopath. Bhogal claims he can successfully treat everything from tumors to arthritis to the common cold.

"It's not my skill that cures them, it's God's will," says the India-born Chaudhuri, pointing his hands toward the sky as he sits in the cluttered cubicle-size clinic he has carved out of his garage. "I tell my patients: 'If you are looking for a doctor, go back; if you are looking to be healed, you've come to the right place.'"

Subash Madra and his wife, Savita, swear by Chaudhuri. On a recent day, the couple had made the 300-mile round trip from their home in Sacramento to seek a cure from Chaudhuri for a litany of health issues they say they suffer from. Madra works as a security guard; Savita works at Mervyns. Neither has insurance. Chaudhuri charges them $20 each per visit, which includes the cost of medicines. That's well worth the long drive, Madra and Savita say, because the medicines are infallible.

The Madras assert that they would have made the trip to Chaudhuri's clinic even if they had insurance. But many of the hundreds of thousands of people in the United States who go to alternative health care givers -- even those with dubious credentials -- choose that path for lack of insurance. Health insurance remains an unobtainable luxury to more than 43 million U.S. citizens. In California, the world's sixth-largest economy, there are an estimated 12 million people who are uninsured, "a third of them clearly poor," noted Dr. Anmol Mahal, president of the California Medical Association, as he outlined plans of the India Community Center at Milpitas, Calif., to open a free medical clinic some time this year. Indian-American doctors have agreed to donate their skills to the clinic.

"This is the richest country in the world and yet, millions of people here don't have access to health care," lamented Dr. Arshia Arjumand who, until recently, worked at the Tri-City Health Care Center in Fremont, Calif. "There's something worse than a Third World country within the U.S."

Community clinics such as the one where Dr. Arjumand worked are often the only primary health care facilities available to the underinsured and the uninsured. And even though these clinics never ask their clients about their legal status, not every immigrant knows this. Often, fear of being reported "keeps them from going to community clinics," Arjumand said.

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