MD-PhD Student, 30, Insured

Interviewed June 2013

(oil on linen 40 ins.x 30 in.)

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Born in Canada after his parents fled civil war in Sri Lanka, the subject became an American citizen at ten years old. His childhood was spent in a lower middle-class area with a predominantly Hispanic and black population.

In his twenties, the subject began volunteering at various public hospitals and free clinics. At the time of painting, he was working at a local clinic that served underinsured, undocumented Asian immigrants. The clinic was open one evening a week for 3 ½ hours. It was staffed by an attending physician, translators, medical students and residents, and others—all volunteers.

Many of the patients he saw at the clinic could have gained access to health insurance through Medicaid expansion, but those who were undocumented residents would not have been eligible.

“If there are no free clinics for this poor, underserved community,” the subject explained, “then there will be no preventative medicine…With no preventative medicine, a patient’s pathology will get worse over the years since it won’t be monitored and treated. Then, when it’s close to being too late, the patients will show up to the emergency room with their illnesses at a late stage.” At that point, care becomes a financial strain on the health care system.

The subject expressed feeling privileged as a recipient of student insurance. When he contracted a serious lung infection in 2011, the teaching hospital where he studied spent thousands of dollars on his care. He wondered what might have happened had he not received immediate treatment, knowing that his patients at the community clinic would not have such timely access to clinical resources under the same circumstances.