A Newspaper reporter assigned to spend 12 hours in the emergency room at Our Lady of the Damned found dangerous overcrowding, long patient waits, health-care professionals under overpowering pressure, patients using the ER for non-emergency conditions, psych patients and homeless people boarding on the premises, and emergency bed usage at capacity, forcing diversions to other hospitals.
Blah blah blah working on ways to deal with the crisis blah blah blah funding stalled blah blah blah high-cost and low-profit blah blah blah create task forces blah blah.
If officials were required to duplicate the experience of the Newspaper reporter who spent 12 hours in an overcrowded, stress-filled emergency room, funding probably would come quickly.
You think? One of our favorite sources of entertainment during interminable waits at Our Lady of the Damned is when some privileged white person with an overblown sense of entitlement somehow ends up in one of our dangerously overcrowded stress filled waiting rooms, and appalled at the savage way he is being treated, attempts to Do Something About It.
Ha! We the Defeated and the Damned already know that The System is an impervious brick wall and if you try to bang your head against it, you're only going to give yourself a bloody concussion. But watching another naive powerless fool have a go at it can provide us with minutes of amusing distraction.
The System is not only an impervious brick wall to its unfortunate users on the inside, but also to any force that tries to change it. My own prediction is that task forces and funding won't make a dent. The System is rotten at its very core, and I fear that Our Lady of the Damned will soon go the way of King-Harbor in L.A. As much as I hate OLD, the possibility of losing it is utterly terrifying.
But nevertheless, to the reporters and readers from the Newspaper: Hey, y'all! Welcome to Reality!
ER waiting room at Our Lady of the Damned. Photo by Newspaper reporter.
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