I agree that vitter/feds have their interests tied to business. But Blanco and the rest have interests tied to big (federal VA) money under their control, under LSU control. Either way, poor people get screwed. Charity was magical and saved countless lives, no doubt, but it was mainly used by poor people who never seemed to get healthier. I don’t know if spending tons of money to build a hospital will guarantee top-notch care unless non-poor people go there. I don’t know if they could attract non-poor people because the ratio of non-medicaid to medicaid patients has decreased post-katrina and there are several private hospitals in the area that won’t just go away if a huge charity is built.

I don’t think “outcome” improvement for indigents will be worth the money if they build a huge hospital. That’s because ill-health and no-insurance, though correlated, have no direct relationship; they’re just on the same side of the class divide. So if you build a big hospital, lives will be saved, but they could’ve been saved with the current charity building (which, depending on what you read, is either totally great or falling apart). But politicians aren’t interested in saving lives, just getting their friends rich or building state-of-the-art wastes-of-money.
But if you give vouchers to the uninsured, they’d get the diagnoses and prescriptions they need, but they’d be no healthier, and it would be an exponentially increasing budget expense, continuously fueling more state/federal GDP into national HMOs, pharmaceutical companies, and hospital groups. Neither option will change society… the only difference is who’s getting rich, out-of-towners or tiger-fans?

The real issue, to me, is that no one admits that New Orleans was screwed BEFORE the hurricane… so charity lovers glorify the old building even though New Orleans was among the unhealthiest cities nationwide. More focus should be on what we know will help people live healthy:

-primary care– prevent illness (charity was tertiary care, i.e. cure sickness)– community clinics that integrate medicine and lifestyle and diet are much more cost-effective and socially just than a hospital megaplex
-social services– schools, afterschool programming, attract better teachers with better pay, public transport (no fresh fruit in walking distance, but plenty of gas-station chicken!)
-psychiatric issues– crime, substance abuse, katrina, poverty: all linked to psychiatric issues

That’s my 2.1 cents!
great article, Daniel!

I cannot think of any other reason why he would be opposed to it being in New Orleans, other than that. He is one of those “let’s keep everything in my district” type of legislators.

it is enraging that anyone would suggest leaving control over the state’s underpriveledged in the hands of health insurance conglomerates. of all organizations, the insurers! by allocating state funds to cover the premiums of private insurance for the uninsured, what happens when health care premiums continue to rise in the future? essentially we’d be tying the state budget into a commitment to continue to pad the profits of private insurers, most of which (even blue cross blue shield) are not based in louisiana, over the coming years.

understanding insurance economics is not an easy task, you can get the perspective of the industry here http://www.flains.org/public/ht_irate.html-ssi

which essentially blames the rapid increase of health insurance premiums on the double-digit inflation of health-care costs.