 All right, well moving back to the U.S. as we saw in yesterday's story from our voices of the American South series, medical costs, hospital closures, opioid addiction and insurance woes, those have all left health care and poverty stricken Southern Appalachia and dire straits. Today Michael Schor continues his reporting, taking a look at the creative solutions that that region is coming up with in the face of crisis. A different kind of health care is lighting the way through the poverty, opioids and limited resources of Appalachia like a headlamp through a coal mine. This is the only substitute they have, the only way they have to get the proper health care. It's a major blessing. Now to that health. Coburn Virginia resident Jerry Kaiser is talking about the health wagon. A mobile medical provider transforming the way health care is delivered here. Right now we have 4900 patients that call the health wagon their home and we've had somewhere around 19,000 patient encounters. Dr. Joe Smitty runs the faith based health wagon, the creation of sister Bernie Kenny in 1980. He says the need for this is profound. Health care is getting worse all the time. I've worked here 40 years and it's dramatically worse. It was a prostate issue that brought Jerry's brother and roommate Mac to Dr. Paula Hill Collins at the health wagon. You know, my PSA's come down to zero and fit one for the health wagon, Paul and the doctors, you know, I probably wouldn't be here. Mac Kaiser served in Vietnam earned four purple hearts, a bronze star and a medal of valor. When you think about what you've done for the country and now what you have to do for your health care, how does that make you feel? It hurts, you know, but I just sometimes I crowd. People are making decisions about, you know, do I pay for my electricity to stay warm? Do I have food to eat? So many variables play into it. When we take the health wagon out, we're actually bringing the service closer to the community. There is a wide community of those doing this work in this area, like remote area medical or RAM, the original creation of Stan Brock, whose first clinic in the US was in Sneedville, Tennessee in 1992. From those humble beginnings, RAM has increased and grown to doing over 65 clinics a year domestically over 45,000 patients. We caught up with RAM senior coordinator Poppy Green at a clinic in Maryland, but he spends most of his time in these mountains. Often will see patients who arrive a couple days before the clinic is set to open. Those patients, we think about that wait time in the parking lot, but many of them have been waiting years. RAM CEO Jeff Eastman says dental care is a major focus. So about two out of three people come in seeking dental help. About a third come in for vision. Teeth are what bring Yvonne Evans to work at RAM. If they don't know that they have a bad tooth or if they have one, they'll go in the garage and take pliers out and take the tooth out. A RAM clinic recently saw over 1400 patients in nearby Gray, Tennessee just before we visited with Dr. Smitty. Does it amaze you that in the United States you have 1400 people lining up to get health care because they don't have it themselves? What we have in America is flimsy excuses for why why those folks aren't cared for. The worst lie of all is you can go to any emergency room in America and receive any health care you need. But in places like Lee County, Virginia, there isn't an ER within reach of so many of the residents. The only hospital for miles closed in 2013. A core group of Lee County residents took it upon themselves to establish a hospital authority board and they have been working diligently ever since to reopen this hospital. Quite honestly at that time, it really seemed hopeless. Mark Lenderton, Howard Elliott are talking about the Ballad Health Facility set to open this year as a full hospital. Today, the nearest hospital is over an hour away. We know that we have lost citizens in the back of an ambulance on the way to distant hospital. So I think that the need is greater than what's realized. Stacey Ealy gave us a tour of the still shuttered facility that will be resuscitated because the hospital authority made it happen. They kept the lights on, they kept the boilers going, they kept the utilities on which kept this building in great shape. So Ballad Health is coming into a great facility. We are currently standing where the future inpatient beds will be. But sometimes it's more than just hospital beds. Sometimes Dr. Smitty just pulls out a banjo instead of a stethoscope. And that's medicine no one else is giving. If I was a medical specialist in New York and pulled out a banjo, they'd probably call the police and send me off somewhere. But here in the mountains, it works, works like a charm. I asked Henry Vires what gratitude sounds like from the folks he serves. What a blessing it is to have you. That's the kind of things you hear. That's the kind of things you see. That's the kind of things we love. And that is just what we saw. Michael Shour, I-24 News in Southwestern Virginia. And joining us now from Los Angeles, our senior national correspondent, Michael Shour. Michael, great series. Let me ask you, healthcare was an issue that Democrats felt really boosted them in the last midterms. Now going into the next election, you've been down there looking at this situation in what is traditionally red states, Republican country, Trump country. How much do you think is healthcare going to be a fact, do you think, going into the 2020 election? You know, it's really interesting. The way you frame that too, Kolev, because this is very red country. Both of those areas where we were are represented by Republican members of Congress in Tennessee and Virginia. It is solidly red country yet by the same token. There are so many people that are left out in healthcare, whether you're in Iowa or whether you're in New Hampshire or whether you're in that part of Appalachia or Appalachia, either pronunciation accepted. You will find people who say that healthcare is the number one issue. It still polls as the number one issue, but it's also a place that is very deeply religious. And so there is a conundrum for many of these people as to how they vote, who will have their best interest when they get to Washington. And so far, the Republicans have been able to lean on the former military and lean on the religious vote in those places. But as healthcare becomes a worsening crisis there, I think more people are waking up to that. And such an important crisis to be focusing on, especially when there is so much distraction, some legitimate, some not, with so much else. Michael, what else can we be looking forward to from the series? Yeah, you know, just on that point, Noree, because it's really true what you say. You go to these places, they're not thinking about Iran. When you heard Henry Vires there say that they're deciding whether to put food on their table, pay their electric bill, or go to a doctor. These are not people that are thinking about Iran when they wake up in the morning. So there is a real divide between what we're talking about a lot and what these people are living. Tomorrow, we will be talking about the issue of vaping. You know, the U.S. government centered in Washington and New York to some degree. But the Centers for Disease Control is in the South, and a lot of what they do is focused on the South. And we're going to talk about that and how that's affecting the South and emergency treatment for that. So it should be an interesting story tomorrow. Noree Kalev. Michael, just before we let you go, you've done a lot of reporting on the ground in various communities across the U.S., whether it's political stories or otherwise. I'm interested just in, you know, what this was like for you. Were you surprised at all by some of what you saw and heard in these communities? Eye-opening. And again, Noree, you point that out, is perceptive. I've never been to that part of America, and it's a place that is as forgotten as they say it is. And when you see, and I asked Dr. Smitty about it, 1,500 people lining up to get health care in America with all that we have here in this country, it really is eye-opening. It's depressing as well. You see small towns. We were in a place called Pennington Gap in Virginia, and you couldn't believe how desperate folks are there. And the streets, the downtown, if you want to call it that, it's eye-opening stuff. The fact that these people are there, that there is still hope in the ashes there, I think that is actually also very encouraging. These are people who go to work to try and make things better there every day. And that is, that's an important takeaway that we all had. Jeff Mills, who is our photographer there, producers Alex Rhodes and Tatiana Diaz, as we looked at this stuff, we saw some hope through what, through Jeff's lens and also through the stories that they were telling us. Yes, the great creative solutions they were coming up with. Unfortunate, obviously, that they have to even come up with something like that, as you said, in America, but still the power of community. Michael Schur, thanks so much for that. And with that, that is it for us, right?