Katrina showed that for-profit medical care produces a more dangerous frame of mind

Though I disagree with the conclusion of this post on the blog 'corrente' (the blogger opposes HR 3200 on the grounds that it doesn't include mandating that only non-profit hospitals be allowed to operate; I support HR 3200 because I recognize the difference between what is possible now and what one might wish),

the blogger lays out very clearly the difference in mindset between what happened at two New Orleans hospitals-- one for-profit and the other non-profit in almost identical situations in the days after Katrina four years ago. Both hospitals lost all power, were flooded out and the staff was desperately short having to care both for sick patients who were already in the hospital and others who were arriving from out of the storm.

In New Orleans Memorial Hospital, a for-profit institution that since 1995 has been under the management of the hospital chain TENET, the staff, operating under the for-profit model imposed by management stretched to the breaking point, literally making decisions about which patients were worth saving and which ones had to die so they could care for the others. One doctor, Anna Pou, even was accused of making arbitrary decisions to end patients lives because of the lack of adequate resources during the disaster. Dr. Pou was eventually not indicted by a grand jury given the horrific circumstances she had to work under but nevertheless you did have a single doctor at the hospital making that decision on behalf of patients. Patients awaiting evacuation were assigned to one of three groups, '1,' '2,' or '3' depending on their health. Patients assigned a '1' were the healthiest and were evacuated first. Many of the patients assigned a '3' were the sickest and received little care and were evacuated last. A significant number of them died.

In contrast, at New Orleans Charity Hospital, a non-profit institution that has always served primarily the poor, the goal (achieved almost to perfection) was very simple. It was to save every patient. Both hospitals were evacuated on about the same schedule but at Charity hospital it was the sickest patients, rather than the healthiest who were tabbed to evacuate first so they could be transported to a facility with electricity, clean water and adequate staffing.

Now, it is easy to sit here online four years later and second guess tough decisions that were made in a truly horrible situation (one of the reasons the grand jury declined to indict Dr. Pou for murder.) However, one has to wonder how much previous training and priorities played into it. At Charity the priorities were pretty clear-- save the lives of the patients, and not decide that any one patient was more or less worth saving than any one other patient. At Memorial the mindset was different. Patients could be prioritized, and in an emergency this priority could even extend to the point of hospital staff deciding that some should die so that others might live.

People first or a system in which some are more equal than others when it comes to receiving care? Which kind of health care system would you rather be a patient in?

FEMA-- Brownie's gone and the President probably still thinks they're doing a Heckuva job.

How do you figure out a way to hide millions in relief supplies from the people who need it, and then give it away to other state agencies instead?

Easy-- you create an obscure office that no one knows about, send them there and then declare that since no one applied for them they are actually not needed.

Then if you have a state government run by good ol' boys (somebody must have tipped them off) they can jump in and claim the loot to plug budget holes in their own agencies.

That's what the Bush administration did with millions of dollars in supplies that never made it to Katrina victims, many of whom are still waiting (I guess it would be a good opportunity to mention that today is July 7, 2008 which makes it officially 1,043 days they have been waiting.)

BILOXI, Mississippi (CNN) -- Prisons in Mississippi got coffee makers, pillowcases and dinnerware -- all intended for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The state's Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks took more coffee makers, cleaning supplies and other items.

Plastic containers ended up with the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration.

Colleges, volunteer fire departments and other agencies received even more.

But the Mississippi hurricane victims who originally were intended to receive the supplies got nothing, a CNN investigation has found...

Last month, CNN revealed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had stored $85 million worth of household items in warehouses for two years. Instead of giving the supplies to victims of the 2005 hurricane, FEMA declared them surplus and gave them all away to federal agencies and 16 states in February.

The state of Louisiana -- the most hard-hit by the storm -- had not asked for any of the supplies, prompting outrage in the community after the original CNN report.

CNN's investigation showed that Mississippi was one of the 16 states that took the FEMA supplies, but it did not distribute them to Katrina victims.

Jim Marler, director of Mississippi's surplus agency, failed to return repeated phone calls over several months to explain what happened.

Agency spokeswoman Kym Wiggins said, "There may be a need, but we were not notified that there was a great need for this particular property."

That doesn't sit well with most aid groups in Mississippi. "You would have to be living under a rock not to know there is still a need," said Cass Woods, the project coordinator of Coastal Women for Change.

Wiggins said that nonprofit organizations must meet federal guidelines and register with the state and that no such groups helping the needy or homeless were registered with Mississippi's surplus agency.

"There is no specific designation outside of a disaster period that says we have to have sustained properties going to the disaster area," Wiggins said.

CNN interviewed the leaders of eight nonprofits helping Katrina victims at a Biloxi, Mississippi, church used as a staging area for community groups. All said they had no idea these items were available, and most had no idea the surplus agency existed.

Yeah. There are thousands of people who are still waiting for help, and they haven't gotten it.

Ultimately the fact that the state of Mississippi, where the story is focused knew about the goods but chose to give it to other state agencies instead of to the victims it was intended for is something which both the Bush administration and Governor Haley Barbour's office is going to have to answer for. In Louisiana, neither former Governor Kathleen Blanco nor current Governor Bobby Jindahl apparently even bothered to apply for the aid at all.

Like I said above, it is 1,043 days and counting that some people are waiting for assistance.

And Brownie's long gone, so it must be someone else who's doing a Heckuva job.

Does anyone notice a contrast between the evacuees we see today and those from two years ago?

It's always tough for people facing evacuations. Everything they have may be gone, and they can only wait and hope and pray. And then wait some more.

And the evacuations now under way in southern California are no different. I hope that the people affected are able to return home soon, and that those who in fact have lost their homes are able to begin rebuiliding very quickly.

Nevertheless, it does give me cause to ponder, especially when I see stories about the thousands now packed into Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Not that I am suggesting that they shouldn't get the attention they now are getting, with rock-and-roll bands providing free entertainment, gourmet foods being served on buffet lines and even massage therapists providing 'stress-release' service for evacuees. And I think that all of this is wonderful. I am glad that they are getting all this service.

However it is hard not to compare the way these people are getting along with the complete lack of attention and deplorable conditions that reigned in the New Orleans Superdome, and later at the Houston Astrodome, two years ago after Katrina. Former first lady Barbara Bush (and the mother of the current President) even visited the Astrodome and said of the Katrina evacuees who were then occupying stadium seats there

Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.

She said this, and then giggled.

Well, now we know where George W. Bush gets his ideas about 'compassionate conservatism' from.

I wonder if the reason why the Katrina evacuees were treated so much worse is that unlike the evacuees in Southern California, they were mostly poor, black and while some owned homes they weren't even close in value to the million dollar houses that are now exploding in flames all over Southern California.

As I said at the outset, the purpose of this post is not to question any of the attention being given to the current evacuees. I certainly feel lucky not to be in any of their shoes today. And the response of government officials at all levels in the current situation has been very good. But it is to question whether a person's economic status and possibly race is directly related to how high a priority they are when it comes to helping them in their time of need.

I wonder if they asked their fellow citizens who were evacuees before turning away help

We've known already that hundreds of millions of dollars offered to the United States after Katrina by international governments was turned down. But now we are learning more of the details.

The U.S. has collected about $126 million and used just $40 million of the $454 million in cash that was offered, the newspaper reported, citing U.S. officials and contractors....

Wasted aid included medical supplies from Italy that spoiled in the elements for weeks after Katrina...

The U.S. turned down at least 54 of 77 aid offers as of January 2006 from three close allies: Canada, Britain and Israel, according to a State Department document, the Post reported.

We only used $40 million of $454 million in cash aid that was offered.... less that ten percent!

And while we are at it, don't forget the hundreds of tons of NATO ration packs that the British donated for Katrina victims only to see us burn it in an incinerator.

Then we also have the question of priorities, and making sure that the friends of the administration didn't get 'cheated.' For example,

Also, the Department of Homeland Security accepted, then later rejected, an offer from Greece to use two cruise ships as hospitals or to house displaced residents for free because the ships could not arrive soon enough, the Post said. The government paid $249 million to use Carnival Cruise Lines vessels.

There are still 100,000 Katrina evacuees living in camps or in government provided housing today, so the issue about arrival times is pretty bogus. So I have to wonder whether the fact that Carnival chairman Mickey Arison is a large contributor to the Republican party and a big Bush supporter might have had something to do with their turning down free cruise ships from the Greeks so they could pay Arison and his company a quarter of a billion dollars in taxpayer money instead.

And other people to have to protect:

Kuwait made the largest offer — $100 million in cash and $400 million in oil, the Post said. The Kuwaitis ended up instead donating $25 million each to the Red Cross and a private Katrina aid group because it seemed to be "the fastest way to get money to the people that needed it,'' the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, Salem Abdullah al-Jaber al-Sabah, told the Post. The oil donation was not collected.

Just think that if we accepted $400 million in free oil what that would do to gasoline prices and oil company profits.

This is criminal, or it should be. If everything was under control and we really didn't need all that foreign aid, then it would be OK to turn it down. But things are still not under control in regard to an awful lot of Katrina evacuees, and under the circumstances WHAT THE HECK IS THIS ADMINISTRATION DOING, TURNING DOWN ALL THAT FOREIGN AID? It's like a man stuck in a deep hole who quits tossing the rope back and insisting that he can get out himself. Only this time it is thousands of people he is tossing the rope away from.