This just made me cry.

[Cleita]

http://www.newtimes-slo.com/index.php?p=showarticle&id=2069

San Luis Obispo's dying fields
In recent months, three seriously ill men have walked to the field across the street from a local shelter to die
BY KAREN VELIE

On the south side of San Luis Obispo, amid blackberry bushes and eucalyptus trees, is a field where three local homeless men perished in less than five months.

There were no stab wounds. There were no bullet holes. In fact, there were no signs of a struggle. However, shortly before their deaths, all three men had been discharged from local hospitals.

From the shopping center and residential neighborhood that border the field alongside Orcutt Road, between Broad Street and a little southwest of Laurel Lane, you can't see the makeshift tents and lean-tos hidden among the trees and bushes. You wouldn't know that numerous less-fortunate residents of the community sleep next to a small creek that meanders through the field littered with sleeping bags, blankets, and patient-discharge bags.

David Fitzwater, 49, was a shell of a man, more than 6 feet tall and a slight 160 pounds. Afflicted with crippling arthritis, a heart condition, and bleeding ulcers, he lived in agony. In spite of his angst, however, he volunteered his time gardening at the Prado Day Center and performing chores at the San Luis Obispo homeless shelter. People loved him.

Shortly before sunset on Oct. 4, Fitzwater's bloated and discolored body was discovered by two homeless men in the dirt field across the street from San Luis Obispo's homeless shelter on Orcutt Road. A plastic hospital discharge bag, bearing his name, still lies atop a pile of fallen leaves near where Fitzwater's body was found. more...please read.

Yet, in San Luis Obispo county, 50% of the homes are empty most of the year because they are vacation homes for people from the San Joaquin valley. I wish the county would look beyond their usual cow pattie fights and put a 10% tax on these second homes, so that proper shelters, transitional care, detox facilities and hospices can be funded.

[acmavm]

1. This is the America that Ronald Reagan, that bastard, created.

I don't care if you're religious or not, how we treat the sick and aged and homeless and the young do determine what kind of people we are. And for the last 30 years, we have been a very very sick, cold, greedy, and cruel nation.

[Fridays Child]

2. Got that right.

That fucking piece of shit.

[irislake]

3. A little Commie-Pinko Health care

wouldn't hurt if you ask me. For profit hospitals don't seem to be a good idea. Even so I'm shocked at the heartlessness.

[Cleita]

6. They closed our County Hospital for lack of funding.

This could have helped these homeless people to die with dignity.

[rumpel]

4. a government that protects the extremely well to do

a society that embraces greed and glamour

a society that judges people by the balance in the bank account

it has to stop.

:(

[irislake]

5. Michael Moore needs to get on this

Isn't he doing an expose on health care? A little bit of bad publicity wouldn't hurt this hospital. He said that whenever he was filming some outrage for his expose insurance companies etc. miraculously came through with the humane treatment every human being deserves to have. Especially in a country that brags that it's citizens are the luckiest people on earth.

[Cleita]

7. I think he stated he was in the final cutting so it's too late to get

this story to him.

[partylessinOhio]

8. WWPD?

[irislake]

9. In Canada

they won't let you go home unless there is someone to care for you until you are well enough to take care of yourself.

[Cleita]

10. That's what people collectively do in a caring, humane and

civilized society. I don't know what's wrong with half of our Americans. I think they've gone batshit crazy.

[rollopollo]

11. No transporation

"discharged without transportation and left to fend for themselves"

This shouldn't be permitted. At bare minimum, the hospital should drop the homeless off at the nearest shelter. Something tells me that if they could do that, some of these tragedies might have been avoided.

[AngryOldDem]

12. I see this all the time

People come in to the shelter literally on death's door because they refuse to go to the hospital because of the poor (and what I call unethical) treatment they receive there. They can be in the greatest pain, with obvious physical symptoms, and they beg us not not make them go. I have heard stories of them being yelled at, laughed at, mocked, and derided by doctors and nurses. I have seen women who have miscarried discharged while their bleeding was still heavy. I have seen men with open sores told that "it's just a rash" and sent on their way, back to us.

The other night, before we called in our guests, a woman came running into the lobby telling us a friend was sick. I went out and the woman told me that she was in severe pain and vomiting blood. She had been to the hospital earlier, and she was told she had han inflamed appendix and gall bladder. They saw that she was vomiting blood and they asked her if she had been drinking Kool-Aid. They discharged her without doing a damned thing for her, and I was afraid that her appendix had ruptured. I called the paramedics, and as they were getting ready to put her on the stretcher, one of them said something to the other and they both smirked. I was so angry I had to just walk away.

Some people are truly disposable in this society. Very sad indeed. Animals get better health care than some of the homeless I see.

My city used to have a hospital that specialized in indigent care. It went out of business several years ago, a victim of corporate greed. All the for-profits used to patch up poor and homeless patients and ship them over to that facility; now they just ship them out.

I could write more but I think you all get the gist.