Emergency Med Care Geo-Equity Impossible in Socialized System

http://www.californiarepublic.org/ ^ | September 21, 2007 | Wayne Lusvardi

[WayneLusvardi]

Emergency Med Geo-Equity Impossible in Socialized System

The Pasadena Pundit - 9/21/07

Excerpt:

Californians contemplating whether their legislators should adopt mandatory employer-paid health insurance or universal health care a la Massachusetts should consider what is happening in East Pasadena, where the closure of the former 165-bed St. Lukes Hospital in 2002 left a perceived void in geographic medical care for the area.

Activists Roberta Marti, Chairperson, EmergencyCareNow and Gene Masuda, Eaton Blanche Park Neighborhood Association, are advocating a City-sponsored urgent care center in East Pasadena, at the former St. Lukes Hospital site on the basis of "geographical equity." The nearest hospitals, Huntington Hospital in West Pasadena and Arcadia Methodist Hospital, are both some six miles away from East Pasadena.

Contra Marti and Masuda, medical care "geographical equity" for East Pasadena is impossible because the emergency medical transport and care system has been geographically socialized.

The emergency ambulance and medical care system is socialized in California by court decree. This is mostly because of the large number of uninsured economic migrants (God bless them) who must depend on the emergency care system as their only level of medical care and are overwhelming the system.

If we could design a perfect emergency medical care system but politicians got no credit for it and newspaper chains sold no more newspapers covering the story, it is unlikely the perfect system would ever come into being. However, if we designed a dysfunctional emergency medical delivery system but politicians got credit and newspapers sold copies, it would be deemed highly successful by virtue of its publicity and political capital. A quiet and privatized preventive emergency medical care system of signing up with a family physician in advance of any medical emergency will never get any notice by the cognitive elites.

[CPOSharky]

This is mostly because of the large number of uninsured economic migrants (God bless them) who must depend on the emergency care system as their only level of medical care and are overwhelming the system.

Translation: Illegal immigrants (God bless them?) drove the hospital broke.

[WayneLusvardi]

Actions and inactions of our elected officials and the media and academics that fail to report the consequences of illegals overwhelming the emergency med system have contributed to making smaller, older hospitals uneconomic to operate any longer. Let’s put the blame where it belongs - on mainly state legislators.

Former St. Lukes Hospital in East Pasadena also needs mega-bucks to bring old structure up to earthquake standards — better to demolish it. Because there is now no hospital in East Pasadena, doctors don’t want to locate offices there and prefer instead to locate near Huntington Hospital in West Pasadena some 6 miles away so they can easily run to hospital from their office.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

If we could design a perfect emergency medical care system but politicians got no credit for it and newspaper chains sold no more newspapers covering the story, it is unlikely the perfect system would ever come into being. However, if we designed a dysfunctional emergency medical delivery system but politicians got credit and newspapers sold copies, it would be deemed highly successful by virtue of its publicity and political capital.

This follows directly from the principle stated in my tagline . . .