The further time removes us from Katrina, the more we'll get these kind of stories:
"Operation Blessing, the charity that launched the clinic after Katrina and raised thousands of dollars to support its operations, has exhausted the stash of private donations that came pouring in after the storm..."
and will be closing.
Dr. Kevin Stephens, Director of the New Orleans Health Department, promises a city health clinic to replace this Operation Blessing clinic sometime in January...which means...little. Except the continued practice of the city public health department eschewing its supervisory role over PUBLIC HEALTH! in lieu of competing with successful clinics like St. Thomas, headed by the inimitable Dr. Don Irwin:
"Before Katrina, the clinic served residents of the St. Thomas Housing Development, a violence-prone housing project recently replaced by low- and middle-income homes. Since Katrina, the clinic also has become a haven for people who were comfortably middle class until they lost their homes, jobs and medical insurance.
The blow the hurricane struck to New Orleans' unique Charity Hospital system has made St. Thomas a potential model for providing medical care to the uninsured in New Orleans and nationwide. By permanently shuttering historic "Big Charity" Hospital, by closing University Hospital for 18 months and by forcing half of the doctors and nurses to relocate outside the city, the storm blew as big a gap in the city's medical system as it did in the Mississippi levees.
It also laid bare the city's two-tiered medical system, where people with means can get top-notch care at one of a number of community hospitals. Those without means, mostly black, were shunted into Charity, where generations of patients waited hours to see a doctor and weeks to see a specialist, and doctors-in-training provided much of the care. Neighborhood primary care, where doctors know patients and monitor their care, was almost non-existent."
And now, in an unfortunate system where universal coverage/single payer doesn't exist, the city health department hopes to open up clinics like the St. Thomas Community Health Center, Tulane University Community Health Center, Common Ground, Exhealth clinics et. al instead of encouraging private development/expansion. And instead of managing the public's health through quality control, disease prevention, and allocation of resources (local, state and national), the city has decided that its best use of time would be to micromanage a few small areas. Great.
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