Who's
Responsible?
Your feature on the state of Charity Hospital ("Who's Caring?"
Oct. 7) and the people who depend upon it was right on target.
The fact is that our state's 10 public hospitals serve a constituency
that private, non-profit hospitals have little interest in serving:
the poor who do not have health insurance and do not qualify for
full state government subsidy of their medical expenses.
Katy Reckdahl deserves credit for getting Department of Health
and Hospitals Secretary David Hood to admit to what he should have long ago:
much of the blame for the condition of Louisiana's underfunded public hospitals
belongs to a Legislature that has cut spending with impunity and redirected
available funds away from their intended recipients.
What Hood fails to acknowledge, however, is that he, too, shoulders
much of the responsibility for the excessive long lines and waits in emergency
rooms and walk-in clinics. The increased volume of needy people previously served
by public hospitals who can't spend nine hours waiting to be seen by a doctor
are now crowding for-profit facilities and community hospitals around the state.
It was Hood and his fellow policy makers who
urged the Legislature and governor to move $326 million in federal funds away
from public hospitals, diverting the funds into the hands of for-profit hospitals,
clinics and physicians. This has resulted in rundown public health facilities
with outdated equipment, low employee morale, long lines of unhappy and notably
very sick people and massive media coverage of our ongoing health care crisis.
--Evangeline M. Vavrick, J.D.
Secretary/Treasurer, The MCL Foundation
Clarification on Charity
Your excellent coverage of public health care in Louisiana and Charity Hospital
("Who's Caring?" Oct. 7) needs only a bit of clarification. At least one of
the "experts" interviewed for the article seemed confused by the value of LSU
Health Sciences Center's graduate medical education programs and equally confused
by why these programs could now be in jeopardy. As an educator, I feel compelled
to set certain matters in a different light.
The reality is that the medical education
programs at LSUHSC's public hospitals are an indispensable asset to the state
of Louisiana. Not only for patients in need today, but also for the future of
health care, for all of our citizens, tomorrow. About 70 percent of the health
care professionals practicing in Louisiana today are graduates of LSU Health
Sciences Center. Medical school graduates who are good enough to be accepted
anywhere choose to complete their preparations as residents in our teaching
public hospitals, particularly Charity Hospital. Not only are they delivering
care as residents, they are becoming Louisiana's future health care work force.
Studies show that the vast majority of residents remain to practice in the areas
where they have completed their residency programs.
It is only too sad that the value of this
system seems to be lost on public policy makers whose decisions shape the entire
health care delivery system in Louisiana.
There is, in fact, no mystery in why the state's
graduate medical education program could be jeopardized. The answer is rooted
in choices like the decision to move millions of federal dollars into private
institutions instead of rebuilding a state system that serves the working poor
and truly needy. It's all about priorities -- in this case, misplaced priorities
that have forced massive budget cuts, resulting in the closing of nine operating
rooms at the Medical Center of Louisiana alone. This has threatened the status
of our most treasured residency programs by depriving young medical professionals
of the patient caseloads they need to gain the necessary level of experience.
It has also deprived those patients of the care they so desperately need.
The reality is that at least a decade of underfunding
and poor choices by the so-called health care "experts" have driven the Charity
system to a point of desperation. We are being forced to deliver health care
in a facility that is comprised, and this, in turn, will compromise the training
of medical professionals into the future.
--J. Patrick O'Leary, M.D.
Interim Dean,
LSUHSC School of Medicine in New Orleans
Slots a Bad Idea
Congratulations. You endorsed one of the all-time stinker deals I've ever
seen ("Making Our Move," Sept. 30). The stated purpose of the "need" for slots
at our beloved and historical Fair Grounds was to increase race purses to compete
with other tracks in the state. That should have been accomplished with the
addition of video poker 10 years ago.
The proposal (and that's all it is, it has
to get through the Planning Commission and the City Council so email, call and
write) provides 15 percent of the slots proceeds to race purses! Fifteen percent
-- that's all! That is the stated reason for the addition of slots! Oh, another
3 percent goes to the horse owners. An anemic 4 percent goes to the city, almost
assuredly not enough to even cover extra police presence in the area. A whopping
18 percent goes to the state for "granting" us the right to have gambling, er,
I mean gaming. Where do the rest of the proceeds go?
Come on, Gambit; it's too late to undo
what has been done, but maybe you can reconsider your misstep and help stop
this travesty before it goes any further.
I do not live near the Fair Grounds. I do
go to the race track for more than Jazz Fest, and I do not want our institution
to go away.
--Geoff Worden
Riefenstahl
Not Evil
I would like to respond to an article written by Andrei
Codrescu ("Brief Obituaries for the 20th Century," Sept. 23).
He eulogized Leni Riefenstahl as an "evil genius." Genius, yes,
evil, no. Leni cared more about making a good movie than a propaganda
film, and Hitler knew it.
Leni was not at all evil, especially compared
to Magda Goebbel, who prided herself on her books bound with human skin from
the death camp corpses and her tea tables made from skeletal remains. Magda
was closer to the Nazi power; she not only knew what they were doing, but was
a driving force.
Triumph of Will would have been a great
film if it had been made by another director. If you have 100,000 uniformed
Nazis all marching in formation and waving flags, you are going to get some
very good pictures.
--Jeff Hockenheimer
