Guaranteed Healthcare

The video you've just watched,  answers some questions about the awful "decision" to close Charity Hospital.  It's a real eye-opener. I urge you to watch it during these bleak days of media analysis on the Republican vice presidential nomination.

Surely you remember Charity Hospital three short years ago, during the terrible days of Katrina?

Charity, like Grady in Atlanta, Cook County in Chicago, Parkland in Dallas, and many others--all are under financial siege. They are also iconic American healthcare institutions.

Before it was shuttered, Charity had one million ER visits a year.

Eighty five percent of the people who came through its doors had no insurance--no Medicare, no Medicaid, nothing.

Surely you also know that Louisiana has the highest number of uninsured residents per capita in the United States? Yes it does.

Despite the urgency of its mission to the community, Charity got "erased". Interesting word, don't you think?

Why was Charity erased?  I'll give you a hint: Naomi Klein.

Charity Hospital was closed in October, 2005.  The closing of Charity opened a huge chasm in the already heavily frayed healthcare safety net. It left many of New Orleans most vulnerable citizens even more exposed and further from basic healthcare. Charity Hospital, the main trama center for southern Lousiana in New Orleans remains closed, and free health clinics are in need of funding to keep their doors open.

The political storm is all about whether to rebuild Charity (the most practical solution), the one by the vast majority of community activists, or whether to contruct an entirely new institution.

Returning to the question at hand. Why was it impossible to keep Charity up and running? Let's just say it was by no means impossible, it was decided to close Charity.

So who will bear the brunt of such government inaction, indifference and possible malfeasance?

Who gets kicked in the face--again? Who else but the low income population of New Orleans which came to depend on Charity.

And make no mistake, people are being hurt--badly hurt. The tragedy of the collapse of the public health safety net in New Orleans, caused by the controversial closure of Charity Hospital and its network of community clinics, is underscored by the findings of a recent study that points to an increasingly sicker population in the city. The Kaiser Family Foundation survey  released on Aug. 13 found that 84 percent of adults living in New Orleans face ongoing health challenges and there has been a substantial deterioration in residents’ mental health status.

But there is some good news for the beleaguered and healthcare deprived citizens of New Orleans.

A just released report has given community activists who have been struggling for three years to provide some semblance of makeshift healthcare and to have Charity returned to the community as a world class, state-of-the-art medical institution a reason to hope.

Here's  a news story  about the report.

Fixing Charity is the faster, cheaper option, study says

BATON ROUGE -- The shuttered Charity Hospital can be gutted and rebuilt into a state-of-the-art teaching hospital for less money and in shorter time than it would take the state to build a new hospital, according to a structural assessment of the building unveiled Wednesday.

"Can Charity be transformed into a modern hospital? We're very happy to say the answer is yes," said Stephen McDaniel, a principal in the Philadelphia-based architectural firm RMJM Hillier, which conducted the evaluation at the request of the Foundation for Historical Louisiana, a preservation group.

The study estimates that the 1938 building could be rehabilitated, complete with a new atrium-style lobby fronting Tulane Avenue, in three years at a cost of $484 million. Building a new hospital would take five years and cost $620 million, the report says.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1219297056241410.xml&coll=1

While, we're all relieved that New Orleans survived this time, here are two inconvenient truths which cannot be ignored. The healthcare infrastructure of this great American city remains in ruins as do the levees which barely kept the city safe from Gustav.