The CNN reporter Heidi Collins got it right when she responded to Dr Morrone's answer:
COLLINS: Yes, understood. What should happen to this hospital staff? We do know that the chief medical officer and one nurse were fired, and we also know, of course, that the investigation is continuing. What should happened here?
MORRONE: I see the federal government using what they like to use as the big stick -- fines. When they look at a hospital, they say you get so much Medicare and Medicaid money, and that's all federal payment for your services, that they withhold the payment as a penalty, and I wouldn't put it past somebody to say, oh by the way, everything that you billed us in 2005 and 2006, we want it all back. You've hit them where it hurts.
COLLINS: Well, unfortunately, the people who are hurt the most then is that community where this may be the only medical facility where they can seek treatment.
Edith Isabel Rodriguez's preventable death while begging for help in the ER, brought back our own gut wrenching memories, of when I took my then 7 year old son to the ER ten years ago, only to experience the same type of devastating neglect, which left him in coma six hours later.
Edith Rodriguez made it all the way to the hospital in intense pain, then lies on the ER floor, writhing in pain, bleeding from her mouth, ER staff refusing to treat her even after her family and some other patients desperately place calls to 911 from in the ER itself.
While I generally agree with the government's regulatory big stick of financial fines, the only meaningful drastic changes needed, would come from a comprehensive overhaul of our boken medical system by implementing single payer universal health care.
Later in the day CNN's Rick Sanchez interviewes CHARLES ORNSTEIN, from the LOS ANGELES TIMES:
SANCHEZ: ... why no one other than the people who were there around her, the other patients, I presume, recognized that she was really in severe straits.
ORNSTEIN: Well, this woman had come into the hospital three times in the three days before her death, because she was having terrible stomach pain.
And, each time, they gave her prescription drugs and discharged her. And, so, finally, the third day, she -- she was in so much pain, she decided not to leave. She waited on the benches in front of the hospital, where police took her to the emergency room.
And the emergency room triage nurse said: Thanks a lot, officers.
She was really angry about having to see this woman again. And she told the woman, essentially: There's nothing we can do for you. And you just sit down.
This is an Outright disgrace in America!
When will we finally start treating health care as a right rather than a commodity?
The only solution in my view is a single payer universal healthcare system, so the woman could have had adequate access through preventative care which hopefully would have avoided the ER altogether.
But even if she still had needed ER care, she would have stood a far better chance to be taken seriously. For one thing, the ER wouldn't be so packed with so many people waiting to get treatment for conditions that are better treated long before they become so severe that they even need ER care.
True, the propaganda machine has been telling us all along that the government can't do anything right, but the most compelling evidence that government can best provide its citizens with equitable and quality healthcare comes from the fact that it's the healthcare system which every other industrialized nation in the world relies on.
So far Edwards and Kucinich are the only ones courageous enough to see the need for a single payer healthcare system. Edwards' plan doesn't immediately transform our system to single payer unlike Kucinich's recommendation, but it's far better than the lip service given to universal healthcare by the two other major contenders.
Check out what Michael Moore says about the opposition to Single Payer:
Link to Dr William Morrone's answer
I left him a message suggesting he look for different solutions and join Physicians for a National Healthcare Program