60 Minutes: Lifeline

The phrase “health care crisis in America” is repeated so often, analyzed from so many perspectives, that it begins to lose meaning and significance. 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley and his crew cut through the clutter and shatter the abstractions in Lifeline, a report about Remote Area Medical (RAM). Stan Brock designed the project to provide medical assistance in the Amazon regions of South America, but he subsequently discovered a parallel need in the United States. With volunteer doctors, nurses, assistants and other health care professionals, his organization has set up temporary clinics in regions throughout the country and treated more than 18,000 patients. Lifeline chronicles one weekend experience in Knoxville, Tennessee, where RAM treated almost a thousand patients and reluctantly turned others away. Some individuals and families, alerted by advertisements and word of mouth, had traveled hundreds of miles to take advantage of the program. Brock, once a co-host of Wild Kingdom, has dedicated himself to this work, dependent on the efforts of volunteers and the generosity of small donors. Following the 60 Minutes coverage, donations reached almost $3 million. Lifeline is classic 60 Minutes—a concise, clear and powerful analysis of a major social issue. For demonstrating the real human costs of the “health care crisis,” a Peabody Award goes to 60 Minutes: Lifeline.