LAT: Story behind one skid row death (holes in US medical system)

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-marina24dec24,1,680634.story?coll=la-headlines-california

"On a sunny May afternoon last year, Marina Lynn Brandt hobbled up to the cinder-block entrance of the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles' skid row, asking for a bed. She was thin and pale, her breathing heavy. Her only form of identification was a plastic hospital band on her right wrist.

Brandt told workers behind the glass contact window that she had been brought to the mission's San Julian Street entrance by a hospital. One worker, Mary Witherspoon, said she thought Brandt looked too ill to have been discharged. An intake clerk began processing her.

Less than an hour after she arrived, Brandt, 45, collapsed on the floor near the front door. Paramedics tried to revive her, but she was pronounced dead that evening. The coroner later determined she had died of pneumonia.

...

The death made little news at the time, because it was a sadly routine occurrence on skid row. Like many who call the downtown streets home, Brandt was mentally ill, with a long history of drug use and the severe health problems that often accompany it. She had logged years on the streets of Southern California and been in and out of health facilities across the region.

But a closer look at Brandt's story reveals how a patchwork system of mental health care and medical services for the indigent often fails some of society's most desperate, virtually ensuring deaths like hers."

The woman was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a UCLA student. The family has to set up a trust to take care of her. When the trust funds ran out, she was bounced from facility to facility, spending much time on the streets. She contracted AIDS while on the street. She died after being discharged from a hospital, ending up at the Union Rescue Mission.

the Budget bill that was shamefully passed by Darth Cheney would have included a provision allowing hospitals to avoid any liability if they turned away people because they couldn't pay. This was one provision that was taken out.

For a party that calls itself "Christian" and "compassionate" they do some very mean spirited things, I think.

We must do better.

:grr:

Doesn't she have any personal responsibility?
Why wasn't she born rich?
She went to UCLA, you mean to tell me she couldn't get a job?
She had a trust fund and she spent it all on drugs, records, and bubblegum.
She had AIDS so she must have been queer.
She didn't have Jesus in her life.
Why should WE take care of her? Let her take care of herself.
She was only 45 she could have enlisted in the military.

:sarcasm:

That's how they think people...that's how they think.