Paraplegic allegedly ‘dumped’ on skid row – Los Angeles Times — Man, this is just an amazing story. Welcome to California, chump! Here’s what we think of people with no health insurance.
A paraplegic man wearing a soiled hospital gown and a broken colostomy bag was found crawling in a gutter in skid row in Los Angeles on Thursday after allegedly being dumped in the street by a Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center van, police said.
The incident, witnessed by more than two dozen people, was described by police as a particularly outrageous case of “homeless dumping” that has plagued the downtown area.
“I can’t think of anything colder than that,” said LAPD Det. Russ Long, who called the case the most egregious of its kind that he has seen in his career. “There was no mission around, no services. It’s the worst area of skid row.”
Los Angeles Police Department detectives said they connected the van to Hollywood Presbyterian after witnesses wrote down a phone number on the van and took down its license-plate number.
found by Aric Mackey
Not only is this “welcome to LA”, this is “Welcome to America.” I’m starting to hate what this country is becoming.
Figure out why it is happening then hate that!
And I suppose next we’ll have laws to ban this sort of thing, and maybe a full regulation scheme to enforce it. And if it were a law on abortion clinics throwing out survived babies, then you’d be against it.
#3
Sentence one – Pretty sure there is a law against drive-by dumping, hence the ‘drive-by’ aspect. Moral integrity could be a powerful enforcement scheme.
Sentence two – Nope, I would support a law against throwing away abortion survivors, pretty sure there is a law against that. All the while supporting a womans individual right to chose whether to have an abortion or not.
Am I a wacko or what?
Mike ..what is your point? You think this is good? Eww. How do you get that way?
Are you do-gooders going to step up and pay the hospital bill. Or are you only do-gooders when it is someonelse is paying the bill?
You bunch of fucking racist shits
Medicaid should pay for this patient to be in a nursing home, but there’s not a lot of other choices. If he refuses to cooperate and is of sound mind options are limited. He may have wanted to stay in hospital, but its not a long term care facility. You could say that his refusal for help constitutes mental problems. If that’s the case somebody better start building camps to hold the homeless. I suspect many citizens would support that option.
Ok, you throw a paraplegic man wearing a soiled hospital gown and a broken colostomy bag out of your van, per hospital instructions.
Understandable, it happens…. but…
“the woman driving the van … proceeded to apply makeup and perfume before driving off”.
Are you #*%&$#% kidding me?
#10, are you saying this is a suitable option for hospitals until the ‘camps’ are built? WTF?! Now, when you say ‘camps’ do you mean the ones with forearm tattoos and special showers? Think real hard this time and come up with another option.
Btw, I didn’t see anywhere that the guy was homeless, just paraplegic. But since he got the ‘Presbyterian Curbside Service’ (TM) means he doesnt have insurance so he MUST be homeless. I bet your glad they don’t let these sort of street urchins in your country club.
Where were they supposed to dump him? Obviously not skid row, but a hospital isn’t the proper place for the long term care of this man either. Instead of Los Angeles filing charges against hospitals accused of dumping, how about they step up and build a facility where these people can be dropped off. Do they think a hospital is the proper place for these people?
The main problem with this country is family doesn’t want the responsibility to care for family anymore. They don’t want to be bothered and want the state to foot the bill. This guy has family somewhere. Do a little research, track them down, and dump him on their doorstep where he belongs. Let the family figure out what to do with him. That they would abandon him is the real tragedy here.
I worked at a grocery store as a teen and I saw this old man leaving the store with what I thought was a bag of rotten fruit. I tackled him and then found out it was his colostomy bag. My bad…
this is monstrous. the man was a paraplegic – he should have been getting some kind of disability and had some kind of insurance. what he needed was a social worker to help him get these things and a place to stay while it went forward.
What was the Hospital supposed to do with him? Actually, they could have just taken him in his wheelchair to the sidewalk in front of their Hospital and dumped him there. By law, as I understand it, they are required to provide emergency care. They provided it and released him. It is the dumping in another part of town that is wrong.
Ok, even that idea sucks. But don’t blame this on the Hospital. The entire ‘For Profit” health industry discourages the treatment of the poor. The radical neo-con conservative element usually wants the homeless to fend for themselves. The libertarian wackos don’t want any of their tax dollars going anywhere except to their benefit. The liberals are usually running around saying how wrong this is. And the people actually doing something are overworked.
Man’s inhumanity to man needs more then just another regulation.
And if anyone asks, we don’t have that problem where I live. We give them a one way bus ticket to Chicago.
They could at least have taken him to a homeless shelter. Oops, that means they’d be accountable. Silly me.
#9 said, “You bunch of fucking racist shits.”
Apparently that was some racial shit in that colostomy bag.
Welcome to the jungle
It gets worse here everyday
Ya learn ta live like an animal
In the jungle where we play
If you got a hunger for what you see
You’ll take it eventually
You can have anything you want
But you better not take it from me
#20 – You got that right and we only have ourselves to blame. We can’t crash a car without jumping out and running. We can’t wear a hat straight. We can’t even hold a gun upright – how the hell can you expect us to pop a cap in someone’s ass while holding a firearm sideways? Then we can’t even run away expediciously because our big ass pants are down around our knees. There are other telling differences, for example – what is the difference between a large pizza and a black man? A large pizza will feed a family of four.
When did we allow hospitals to be FOR PROFIT? We didn’t they just did it. Any wonder why your health insurance costs have gone up 300 percent in the last 5 years? Who can afford healthcare premiums that cost as much as your average one-bedroom rental? This is making more and more people uninsured, and raising costs for those who can still hold-onto insurance. There are no government oversights on the prices, the practices, or the quality of medical care anymore.
These corporations are milking it for all it’s worth…and f*cking all of us. We get substandard care, and dumping is common.
Emergency rooms are closing at astounding rates. The average Emergency room wait is over 12 hours!!! Clinics are worse. Doctors are scarce. It’s not uncommon in California to book a doctors visit 6 months in ADVANCE!!!
“It used to be that just about every American community was served by one or more non-profit hospitals–institutions created by charity and taxes and often run by religious organizations. But in the 1990’s corporate change, led by industry giant Columbia/HCA, found they could make money by taking non-profit hospitals and converting them to for-profit ones. Between 1990 and 1996, for-profit companies bought up some 200 non-profit hospitals. Linda Miller, president of an organization of non-profit hospitals, says a huge amount of money is changing hands. ” February 2, 1998 The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript
LARGEST FOR-PROFIT, PUBLICLY TRADED HOSPITAL COMPANIES
(ranked by number of licensed beds)
1. HCA INC. (based in Nashville)
175 hospitals
40,056 licensed beds
2. TENET HEALTHCARE CORP. (Santa Barbara, CA)
113 hospitals
27,748 licensed beds
3. TRIAD HOSPITALS INC. (Dallas)
45 hospitals
7,816 licensed beds
4. COMMUNITY HEALTH SYSTEMS INC. (Brentwood, TN)
70 hospitals
7,020 licensed beds
5. UNIVERSAL HEALTH SERVICES INC. (King of Prussia, PA)
25 hospitals
5,846 licensed beds
6. HEALTH MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES INC. (Naples, FL)
41 hospitals
5, 769 licensed beds
7. PROVINCE HEALTHCARE COMPANY (Brentwood, TN)
20 hospitals
2,315 licensed beds
8. LIFEPOINT HOSPITALS INC. (Brentwood, TN)
23 hospitals
2,196 licensed beds
(source: Corporate Research E-Letter No. 31, January 2003)
http://www.corp-research.org/archives/jan03.htm
This story of dumping doesn’t surprise me, it sickens me. And, know what….this story isn’t about color or anything else. Wait until YOU or your family need hospital care and it’s denied because your insurance isn’t tier-one, or with a low enough deductible. Or worse, you are relying on Medicare. The time to get outraged is now, you know.
Do the numbers…
Are there enough doctors and BEDS, for 1% of the prople to be iLL?
NOPE. Even with the list above, hospitals have problems, INCLUDING, being a business.
#9 – I laugh at you and your bleeding heart
ECA…go back to school and learn how to read….that was the list of the TOP 10, not all the beds in the country.
wow, moronic.
Once again, yet more proof of how evil religion really is. “Hollywood PRESBYTERIAN” hospital did this. Christianity (and most other religions) have NOTHING to do with helping people and EVERYTHING to do with gaining more and more power for a wealthy few.
#17
> The liberals are usually running around saying how wrong this is.
You failed to complete the sentence: “The liberals are usually running around saying how wrong this is but do nothing themselves.”
#17, 22
RE: Non-profit hospitals
You seem to be under the illusion that non-profit hospitals are free. As the first rule of scarcity goes, “There are no free lunches.” Someone is paying for that non-profit hospital, the doctors, nurses, equipment and facilities whether it is owned by a corporation or is managed by local government. You will note, for example, that the primary medical staff that worked at non-profit hospitals did not do so for free.
Furthermore, along the lines of scarcity, if this paraplegic person is taking up a bed, it is a bed that cannot be used by someone else that is sick. You don’t hear about the other people that could not get prompt care because of the bed taken by this guy.
#27,
You don’t hear about the other people that could not get prompt care because of the bed taken by this guy.
No we didn’t. Why? Because the topic was the treatment given to ONE man. They dumped him on the sidewalk, dressed only in a hospital gown. Even though he is a paraplegic, he had no means of mobility, such as crutches or a wheelchair. He wasn’t given into the care of a social worker or Medicare worker. He wasn’t given over to the VA (if he qualified). He wasn’t taken to a homeless shelter.
The Hospital has a duty of care and they didn’t do it. Their operating license compels them to perform at a certain level and they failed. They treated a human being like a bag of trash.
We also didn’t mention the world’s limited supply of oxygen you are taking up.
Ok, so how many people couldn’t get treatment at Hollywood Presbyterian that day because he was in the hospital?
Meetsy,
go back and find the OTHER 10,000….And deny my statement…
IF you can find 10,000 more. that would average about 200 per state.
Then figure a number of 2000 beds EACH, which is a HIGH number. As I havent seen that many beds in most hospitals.
NOW read the titles of the hospitals you LISTED.
Those are the Corp HOLDERS…I would hope there are more then 1, 2 , 3, in each group…So I am thinking that Im talking about MORE then 10 hospitals….
It would be cooler if California just split off of the US and sunk into the ocean. Maybe New York too.
I’d keep Florida though D: Disneyworld > all of you.
The previous comment was only 1% elitist.
Got homeless people? Dump them on the Amish. It seriously wouldn’t hurt anything. Its better then dumping them on skid row, or getting AIDS in the butt.
This country is supposed to be about freedom, but it bans everything. It just needs to ban one thing. Religion. Its killed more people than lack of hospital beds and the other meaningless things talked about in this thread.
What do you do with paraplegics with colostomy bags.
2 Words People:
Walmart Greeter
#28
> Because the topic was the treatment given to ONE man.
Are you so dense as to not understand that hospitals do not have unlimited supplies or are you just another liberal that has no concept about managing scarcity (given your past responses I think we know the answer)? When the hospital cares for one person they are NOT caring for someone else; even one guy. The hospital has a limited supply of beds, personnel and equipment.
Secondly, they DID provide care. But how far does that care extend? Why didn’t they provide a physical therapist? Perhaps state-of-the-art prosthetics? Perhaps a live-in therapist?
Anyone that has ever been part of a story reported by the LA Times knows that there is likely more to this story than is being presented. However, if everything that is presented is true, there is no question that the hospital committed a serious crime. Yet, I suspect that the root motivation stems from an inability to provide hospital care to those that actually need it and deal with people consuming hospital resources but no longer needing hospital care. The hopsital needs to move those people because they are preventing others from getting care.
This person did not need hospital care and just because he had no where to go does not mean he can continue to consume hospital resources and take up a bed (and thereby deny someone else of that space). A hospital is not a nursing home.
> Ok, so how many people couldn’t get
> treatment at Hollywood Presbyterian that day because
> he was in the hospital?
Good question. We should ask the hospital how many manhours and resources were expended dealing with this individual after his need for hospital care had ended and how many would have likely been expended had they followed proper channels in moving this individual.
> He wasn’t given into the care of a social worker or
> Medicare worker. He wasn’t given over to the VA (if he
> qualified). He wasn’t taken to a homeless shelter.
Since he was not at a VA hospital, I suspect that he did not qualify for the VA. As for the other choices, we don’t know if any of those avenues were actually tried. For example, it is possible that the none of the homeless shelters in the area would accept this person in an official capacity. It’s possible that they couldn’t get a social worker for six months. Who knows. We obviously do not have all the details but I do know that there is likely to be far more to this story than is initially reported.
duh, certainly “not-for-profit” hospitals aren’t free….they aren’t out to make a profit, either. They don’t have shareholders to contend with, or a staff of beancounters to find more ways to up the bottomline.
The corporate-for-profit-hospitals made the leap to make wards look more like fancy hotels (to attract the well-insured client, not a patient). They produce fancy brochures and websites boasting of the ambience, the hotel-features, the extra touches. They are putting carpets over every square inch of the place (perhaps except operating rooms, but I’m not so sure). They are cutting back on nurse services.
Meanwhile super bacteria, drug resistant strep -MERSA, is flourishing. (Infections contracted in hospitals are the fourth largest killer in the United States.) Is this surprising? NO!
All the frills are killing us. First it’s because you can’t property clean a rug (textiles can hold bacteria…from diptheria to strep no matter WHAT kind of anti-bacterial material they’re supposed to be made of), and secondly, the cheaper labor — less experienced and perhaps less trained — seems to be washing their hands less than they should (seriously, hospitals have campaigns to promote better hand washing!!! Like this is somehow not obvious!).
I guess someone hired to be a hotel maid wouldn’t have the same skills or intellect as a trained hospital technician, now would they? (Hard to take seriously the involvement to detail it takes to really clean a hospital room when you’re making minimum wage.)
So, yeah….the hospitals are all for-profit, and we all get to pay the higher markups and all the fancy accounting bullshit on the bills.
Have you ever seen a hospital bill?
They charge you for your stay, for the rental of the room, for the rental of the operating theater, for the rental of the recovery room. They charge for every item (including those broken, dropped, and/or otherwise wasted) while attending to you. They charge you — individually — for every person who gives you some service..the various docs, the surgical staff, etc. They also charge you for meals, and for a great many mystery charges that no one can explain, if you ask.
In fact, if you put all the bills — itemized — down, you see that you are charged twice for many of the same services. So, in fact, the room/bed rate is not part of the the room rental. You have a price of say $495. a day, but that’s for breathing the air, as the bed and room service rentals are also charged. If a monitor is IN your room, you maybe charged for it, as well, even if it is not used, because if you aren’t using it, it’s still there — in case. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started to bill individually for flushing the toilet. They may.
Okay, so let’s review….50 years ago most people did NOT have insurance. They were “self pay”. The hospitals billed them for the services (not double or triple charges), the people paid. It was affordable. So, then insurance came to be, so for a few dollars a month, they’d pay for any major medical expenses. As time went on, the hospital charges became greater and greater and greater as the number of “insured” grew. Then it became a need to have insurance. And, now insurance costs are skyrocketing….as I said I’ve had a 300% increase, and a lowering of benefits, in the last 5 years.
And, now, if you try and self-pay you get this whopping bill that is enough to bankrupt most (if we could still declare bankruptcy for hosptial expenses).
The whole industry is out-of-control, rampant with greed. It’s a BUSINESS. Big business. It’s not about helping people, it’s about sucking them dry. Once dry, they are discarded. And, if you don’t have insurance to begin with…well, there are SOME federal and state payments for hospitals, and there is some tax benefits and write offs (that benefit the hospitals, for sure) for treating the uninsured, but once you hit the dollar mark..it’s OUT THE DOOR.
For every dollar billed and not paid…the hospital writes that off the bottom line. It’s all fancy accounting bullshit.
Oh, so you say, the equipment cost so much? That’s bullshit. The R&D may cost some, but you know it’s inflated. I’ve seen technology that is only re-packaged (color ECHO, compared to b&w ECHO) and the pricetag is 10x as much. There is no way that all of the hospital machines cost as much as they do! In fact, 90% of them have a PC computer as the “guts” of the machine…and we all know what a PC costs…really. So, how is it that an OEM can slap a huge markeup on a computer and no one thinks twice? Oh, it’s hospital equipment…I guess that makes it special, huh? Yeah, like the military expenses that value a wrench at several thousand dollars!
We’re being sold a bill of goods by the hosptials. If they weren’t making fistfulls of profits — they COULD BE in the business of helping people, and keeping costs reasonable, and providing enough beds for people — there would be no patient dumping. But, again, we have corporate greed to blame…so why are some of you defending hospitals and their charges?
This is worse than being kicked out of a hospital emergency room as happened to one of mine – a rehabed alcoholic with pancreatitis, in pain, who one doctor refused needed medication, regarding her as
merely a ‘drug seeker’. This happened at more than one major hospital in Boston, MA. As often, there was admission depending on who was in the ED that night.
In relation to getting SS disability – finally, one year after her death, the
court granted disability benefits, listing her true condition in the decision. Vindication – at last. Dog-20