L.A. Investigating Alleged Patient Dumping (wandering Skid Row)

[DeepModem Mom]

LAT/AP: L.A. Investigating Alleged Patient Dumping
By GREG RISLING, Associated Press Writer
March 24, 2006


LOS ANGELES -- Authorities are examining a surveillance tape that shows an elderly woman wandering Skid Row in a hospital gown and slippers as they investigate the practice of hospitals and police agencies dumping homeless people downtown.

Carol Ann Reyes, 63, of Gardena, was taken from a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Bellflower on Monday to the downtown area known as Skid Row, authorities said.

surveillance camera outside the Union Rescue Mission showed Reyes walking from the direction of a taxi that had just driven away. She wandered the street for about three minutes before a mission staff member brought her inside.

City officials have been looking into the alleged dumping of homeless people in Skid Row, a ramshackle area downtown.

Several hospitals have acknowledged that they put some discharged indigent patients with nowhere else to go into taxicabs headed to the area because it offers a chance for getting services and shelter. Los Angeles police also are investigating whether other law enforcement agencies dump people without anywhere else to go downtown....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/ats-ap_top16mar24,1,7591054.story?coll=sns-ap-topnews&ctrack=1&cset=true

[DUHandle]

1. The practice of busing the poorest

across county lines to avoid the expense of maintaining shelters is not unknown.

[havocmom]

3. County lines?

A few years ago, some in Salt Lake City were busted for bussing some of their homeless to AZ for the winter!

[DUHandle]

9. The ultimate in outpatient care

Or so the cynic in me could say.

On a better day I’d joke about polygamy has made too many mouths to feed in Utah.

What we’re probably seeing here are a few spreadsheet-enabled people looking at the end of the quarter and looking out for their behinds.

Either that, or the result of compassionate conservatives addressing the entitlement “problems”

[havocmom]

10. "spreadsheet-enabled" Good one!

Welcome to DU, DUHandle! Looking forward to reading more from you :hi: & :toast:

[LibDemAlways]

5. Bellflower is in LA county not far from downtown.

I can't believe the hospital didn't contact a social worker to try to help this woman before dumping her onto the streets. Since Kaiser is an HMO, she must have shown up at their emergency room - and they simply got rid of her at the first opportunity. Shameful.

[havocmom]

2. They ADMIT putting people in cabs and sending them to skid row?

In hopes some kind shelter worker will get them inside?!?! :wtf:

How is that any different from just dropping a stray cat or dog off in traffic? :grr:

Don't they have telephones? Can't they just fess up that they are not doing what they are mandated by law to do if they receive any public funds at all? Can't they just call shelters at least? A call is less than cab fare! Think how happy the bean counters who make all the decisions about our health care in America would be with the savings!

:nuke: :grr: :nuke: :grr: :nuke: :grr: :nuke: :grr: :nuke: :grr: :nuke: :grr:

This culture needs a good hard look at its values!

[Warpy]

4. A few hospitals in Boston were discharging homeless men

to the Pine Street Inn fifteen years ago! This is really nothing new, only that the people are being put on the street instead of being delivered to the door of the rescue mission or homeless shelter.

The point is that there is NOWHERE ELSE TO GO. Flophouses and rooming houses, the mainstay of marginal workers until Reagan got in, have been bulldozed or turned back into mansions for yuppies. Places that used to house thirty people in the 70s now house a single family of three.

Yes, those places were funky, but they still beat the street. There has been absolutely no will to create housing for marginal workers over the past 25 years. There has been no will to maintain the little housing they had for the past 25 years.

These folks being dumped on the street or at the doors of homeless shelters are the canaries in our coalmine. We're all just a few paychecks away from joining them, so it is in our interest to improve their lot.

[madrchsod]

6. happened in illinois when we shut

down the state schools for the retarded and mentally ill. those who still are living are wandering the streets of chicago and other big cities in illinois.

[peacetalksforall]

7. So - just how are we superior to the other countries on this planet?

The question is for those people who are always putting down the world to flaunt our superiority. We were duperior in three areas - the Constitution, the hard work ethics of the little people, and technology. Others say we are superior for a variety of other reasons.

I say, take a look at where we are now. We specialiaze in killing, torturing, destroying, selling out, corporate theft, congressional stealing, shipping jobs, offshore law evasion and profit cover-up, dishonest news, propaganda filled court jestering, and stolen votes. I could go on.

[Tempest]

8. L.A. is dumping its homeless in Bakersfield

There was a report two weeks ago where L.A. is giving the homeless a bus ticket to Bakersfield.

We've seen a big increase in the number of homeless here in the last few months so one of the local TV stations started investigating and uncovered L.A.'s dirty little secret.

[ninkasi]

11. Reagan's legacy

lives on, made even worse by Dimson. We can't claim moral superiority when we allow the weakest, most vulnerable members of our society to fend for themselves. Oh, how we cherish our corporations, giving them billions in tax cuts and incentives, and how we cherish our wealthy, excusing them from paying taxes on unearned money...and how we abandon, with cruelty, the ones who need us most.:sarcasm: