Where does private responsibility to the homeless end?
There is this story in the LA Times (“Paraplegic allegedly ‘dumped’ on skid row,” by Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton, Times Staff Writers) about another case of hospital “homeless dumping,” which is dropping off a homeless person at their “home” on skid row after being treated in the hospital. The involved hospital is being charged with kidnapping, apparently for taking these individuals to someplace that they do not want to go. While forcing someone to go someplace is kidnapping (just as it would if the police gave a hitchhiker a ride out of the county), the real question that I would like to pose is “where does the responsibility of a private hospital to the homeless patient end?”
Once a hospital has treated a patient, how long are they obligated to take care of that individual, providing room, board and constant nursing attention? If they are bound to provide long-term care (which they will not provide to anyone else), and certainly neither Medicare nor Medicaid will provide for such long-term care by using ordinary hospitals (they will probably pay for such care at long-term care facilities, however).
While dumping a recovering patient on the street is inexcusable, where is the hospital to send these patients? Surely it is not their responsibility to provide long-term care. If it were, urban hospitals would soon fill up with homeless patients who have recovered past the point where they need acute care, and will make it difficult for acute-care patients to be treated. There is a cost, a human cost, for acute-care hospitals to provide long-term care for every homeless patient that walks in their doors. Where do we draw the line? Who is responsible for this long-term care? I see no easy solution. Do you?
MC
February 9th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Media accounts seems a big fogged – some said he requested to be dropped where he went and that he did have a wheelchair, but it was somehow in the bushes.
Other said he was all but tossed out as litter and a Dickensish scene is recounted of a soiled cripple, belongings grasped in his teetth, pulling himself along.
California arguably has the broadest socialist benefit package for residents (I was going to type “citizens” but California has largely dispensed with citizenship being a requirement for social wlefare benefits).
Let us argue that the “victim” in this case was incompotent and a “ward of the state” – a health institution sees a person like this as a potential “income stream,” tending to work towards capturing this income stream for the organization.
Public moneys attached to the cripple make him an economic benefit for an care provider to take in.
Then lets argue that he is an independent mentally able citizen and actively sought to be returned to his skid row world. Not only would the hospital have no legal right to hold him against his own will, but the economic incentive (assuming he has no way to cover his bills) is to see him off.
I expect we will here more in the Media if this was a dumping, but as the story is less enganging if he demanded he be put off in skid row, the media will drop it favor of other news that sells advertising if that is the case.
Steve W