Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 12:22:16 PM
The County of Los Angeles owns and operates hospitals and other health facilities. Doctors, nurses, administrators, and others working at the hospitals are often county employees or county-hired consultants, and much of the staff is unionized.
Located in an unincorporated area neat the City of Los Angeles’ Watts area, the hospital currently known as Martin Luther King, Jr. - Harbor Hospital opened in the early 1970s in what was seen as a way to "address the causes" of the Watts Riots of the mind-1960s. (Yes, in California we reward neighborhoods for rioting.)
It was seen as a “black” hospital that served the “black community”. And therein was a problem that would lead to
its current crisis, in which it is being shut down.
In addition to being staffed with unionized county employees, notoriously hard to fire, truly addressing problems at the hospital was hard to do because of charges of racism against critics. “Defenders” were quick to play the race card, and critics were all too willing to back off for fear of being called racists. So, ironically, the hospital was treated differently because of black activist-backed racism. This meant that the “black community” that the hospital was serving was not getting the quality of care for which they, their insurance companies, and taxpayers were paying. Plenty of competent staffers, including “black” staffers, recognized this frustrating reality, as they saw incompetent, indifferent, or downright fraudulent coworkers get a pass.
Not helping matters was that most people who had a choice preferred not to work at a hospital in an area between Watts and Compton. Gangs and other criminals were the main reason. This meant that great medical professionals from outside the area wouldn’t take jobs there, and those who grew up in the area sought to escape to work elsewhere. This made it even more difficult to remove problem employees, as it wasn’t so easy to find replacements.
Meanwhile, the taxpayers of Los Angeles County endured lawsuit after lawsuit due to mistakes made at the hospital. Many of those lawsuits involved wrongful death, because members of the “black community” were being killed by the sloppy service. Government officials tried again and again to do something, but didn’t do enough due a combination of political correctness and civil service rules. Recently, a woman writhed on the floor of the emergency room as hospital staffers refused to help her, a janitor even working around her. Other people visiting the ER called 9-1-1 to try to get help, but the operator understandably declined to send help, reasoning that she was in an ER already. She died.
And thus, we have another example of how true racism kills, and fear of being called a racist has resulted in much more harm that the alleged racism ever would. There’s one less emergency room in the area.
Maxine Waters has blamed the messenger – the
Los Angeles Times. I guess she can’t handle the truth.