This is nothing new. Michelle Obama’s job at the University of Chicago Medical Center/School was “moving” poor clients to “more appropriate” facilities.
Kaiser in California also got popped in 2007 for literally dumping homeless and derelict patients. Sometimes right on LA’s Skid Row.
Check out the first three paragraphs of the Obama story. It’s a “Who’s Who” of Chicago democrat politics.
Sen. Barack Obama’s wife and three close advisers have been involved with a program at the University of Chicago Medical Center that steers patients who don’t have private insurance — primarily poor, black people — to other health care facilities.
Michelle Obama — currently on unpaid leave from her $317,000-a-year job as a vice president of the prestigious hospital — helped create the program, which aims to find neighborhood doctors for low-income people who were flooding the emergency room for basic treatment. Hospital officials say such patients hinder their ability to focus on more critically ill patients in need of specialized care, such as cancer treatment and organ transplants.
Obama’s top political strategist, David Axelrod, co-owns the firm, ASK Public Strategies, that was hired by the hospital last year to sell the program — called the Urban Health Initiative — to the community as a better alternative for poor patients. Obama’s wife and Valerie Jarrett, an Obama friend and adviser who chairs the medical center’s board, backed the Axelrod firm’s hiring, hospital officials said.
As someone who lives in a state where hospitals and ERs have closed due to non-paying patients, I’m not sure what the answer is; our “first care” clinics are a workaround because they won’t see you without all of your info - but they can’t do as much as an ER. Basically the government requires ERs to treat patients regardless of means to pay (or legal status in this country), then continuously cuts the reimbursement for such care - eventually closing the hospital (or at least the ER part). While paying for care for Americans seems noble enough, doing so in a state flooded with illegals is ridiculous.