In one of the four florescent-lit exam rooms of the nation’s oldest free clinic, Sister Mary Ellen Howard told the Cover America Tour producers about a poll she gave the dozens of uninsured patients that shuffle through Cabrini medical facilities every month.

The poll asked them what they would do if they didn’t have Cabrini’s volunteer labor to care for their medical needs, from routine check-ups to getting their diabetes medicine. Half of them said they would go without care. Some said they would go to the emergency room. One patient wrote only “.38 Special,” the name of a bullet, what I can only guess meant they would die or kill themselves without the free care that Cabrini provides.

That’s pretty extreme.

Sister Mary Ellen told us about other extreme things, mainly about the changes they’ve noticed in their clientele recently. More people are calling the clinic to inquire about their services. Patients have been coming in showing more advanced stages of illness, and in the past few months, the head physician reported that her patients have been losing weight.

Considerable weight. Not just a few pounds, but 10, 20, 30 pounds. So the volunteer doctors have started asking not just “How are you feeling,” but “Are you eating enough?” and “Do you know where to get free food?”

One can only surmise that people are eating less because of the rising costs of food, of fuel, and of the troubled economy. But I felt flurries in my stomach when I saw this flyer (right) on the Cabrini Clinic walls.

The patients at the Cabrini Clinic are the working poor. They don’t have insurance at their jobs. Many of them don’t qualify for government health care for the poor because they have an income. I know people are pinching pennies. But we are at a whole new level when working people, in the United States, are suffering from lack of food.