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ObamaNation See other ObamaNation Articles Title: Death By Affirmative Action When Affirmative Action Kills A recurring theme we've covered here is the consequences of placing unqualified individuals in fields such as medicine or aviation, where mistakes can cost lives (see, for example, The Next Affirmative Action Disaster). Richard Hanania @RichardHanania · Follow Why care about merit? What harm is there in affirmative action programs that reward the less qualified? Here's the story of the Martin Luther King Jr/Drew Medical Center (King/Drew) in Los Angeles, which operated from 1972 to 2007. Problems appeared right away. In 1975, the LA Times reported on "horror stories implying neglect and incompetence." Employees were said to be drunk on the job or on drugs stolen from the hospital pharmacy. A letter from a nurse in 1977 gave it the moniker of Killer King. It took an LA Times report in 2004 to reveal how things had gotten. According to one accreditor, the hospital had "problems of orders of magnitude that are substantially greater than almost all other hospitals in this country." King/Drew spent $20.1 million on malpractice payouts from 1999-2004. Adjusting for the number of patients it saw, this was the worst figure of any hospital in the entire state of California. Patients would come in with minor medical issues and end up dead. Locals would run away from ambulances in order not to be brought to Killer King. Police officers had an understanding that if their colleagues were shot, they would not allow them to be taken there. Once, a nine year-old daughter of Guatemalan immigrants was hit by a car. She had minor scrapes and a few broken teeth, and her parents thought should would be out before long. But the girl wouldn't survive Killer King. First, they gave her enough sedative to sedate a grown man. They then needed to hook her up to a ventilator, but the settings were wrong. She was starved of oxygen, and then for unclear reasons a doctor had her breathing tube removed. Staff failed to monitor her condition. The girl was soon brain dead and had to be taken off of life support. The family settled with the hospital for $195,000, and as of 2004 was planning to build an alter at her grave in Guatemala. In 1992, a sheriff's deputy was taken to the hospital with four gunshot wounds. Joking with nurses when he arrived, he was dead two days later. The surgeon had given him a lethal combination of heart drugs. In 1992, a sheriff's deputy was taken to the hospital with four gunshot wounds. Joking with nurses when he arrived, he was dead two days later. The surgeon had given him a lethal combination of heart drugs. Community activists complained that King/Drew didn't have enough funding. In fact, it got more funding per patient than the other three general hospitals in Los Angeles County. Where did that money go? Overpaid employees, many of which became famous for their creative disability claims. "Between April 1994 and April 2004, employees filed 122 chair-fall claims at King/Drew." The hospital spent $3.2 on claims of employees falling out of chairs alone. Once, a cashier was getting married. Her supervisor found out that she hadn't been asked to a bridesmaid. The supervisor got mad, and the cashier said this gave her stress. Killer King paid the cashier $216,000 on that claim. A male nurse was tending to a semi-conscious patient having a leg operation. 20 minutes in the surgery, he reported being slugged in the back by a female colleague who knocked him to the floor. King/Drew was expected to pay him more than $500,000 for back and neck injuries. In five years, Killer King spent nearly $34 million on employee injuries. That was more than any of the University of California medical centers, some of which were two or three times its size. LA Times in 2004: "Some employees habitually fail to show up, logging weeks, even months, of unexcused absences each year. And those who do come to work often don't do their jobs, causing one consultant in 2002 to remark that they had 'retired in place.'" A 28 year-old man died when the nurse who was supposed to be watching him had silenced the alarm on his vital-signs monitor. She also falsified his medical charts, claiming that he was in stable condition an hour after he had died. A 28 year-old man died when the nurse who was supposed to be watching him had silenced the alarm on his vital-signs monitor. She also falsified his medical charts, claiming that he was in stable condition an hour after he had died. When LA County met to discuss closing the trauma center, Maxine Waters organized a demonstration that included Jesse Jackson, and grabbed the microphone as she took control of the meeting. Politicians were cowed into silence for decades. Nonetheless, the LA Times won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on what was happening at Killer King in 2004. Under increasing pressure, the hospital was finally shut down in 2007. In 2015, it was replaced at the same site by the MLK Community Hospital, a $200 million building. While still serving the black community, the new hospital appears to have much lower ambitions than King/Drew. As of 2017, it didn't have a trauma center and avoiding hiring specialists or treating the most difficult cases. It focused on basic preventative and primary care. Poster Comment: More tweets and more material at source. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Horse (#0)
Ain't nobody got time for that shit... “I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.” - William S Burroughs
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