The Free Clinic Movement in the United States: A Ten Year Perspective (1966–1976)

Abstract

The mid 1960s was a time of political, social and cultural change. People throughout the United States were coming together expressing their new found freedoms and experimenting with alternative lifestyles. Out of a need for more relevant and adequate health care and frustration from dealing with the existing medical system, the free clinic movement was born. The Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, the first free clinic in the country, opened in June 1967 and since that time has seen over 400,000 client visits for a wide variety of medical and drug problems. The free clinic movement has had to deal with various issues over the years ranging from operational problems with licensing and malpractice insurance to pressures from mainstream medicine and the communities they serve. This paper deals with some of the more powerful issues the free clinics have had to contend with, from my own personal perspective, and provides an insight into the movement and its basic founding principle that health care is a right, not a privilege.