insomnomaniac

"Home Sweet Hospital" for the Homeless

I wonder how this will mesh wih "universal health care?" How will they fit all the sick into the hospitals that are filled with the homeless accumulated over time? I gather once a homeless person is admitted he is in for life, since, as a homeless he person, he has no place to be discharged to!

A new city ordinance, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, makes it a misdemeanor for health facilities to transport a patient to a place other than his or her residence without written consent.

Hospital administrators fear that a conviction could trigger an automatic exclusion from government health programs, a financial blow few hospitals could survive. They also worry about the cost of keeping patients who are healthy enough to be discharged but have no place to go.

In hospitals, patients have a "nice, warm bed, three meals a day and maybe even a television and people waiting on them. They are literally saying to us, 'I don't want to go. If you discharge me, I will call the L.A. Times,' " says Carol Meyer, director of governmental relations for the Los Angeles County's Department of Health Services.

When will the taxpayers of CA revolt and put a stop to this kind of insanity??? I'm thinking the first time someone who could PAY is turned away b/c the hospital is full and some homeless person refuses to give up his room. In other words, in a few months or so.