Playing Chicken with Lives - Politics and the Rebuilding of Charity Hospital

There can be no doubt that recovery all along the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and, more than three years later, Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Ike, has stalled, and stubborn politicians combined with seemingly intractable bureaucracies have failed victims most in need. There could be no greater symbol of this failure than the empty, boarded-up Charity Hospital.

Charity Hospital - the soaring Art Deco-era facility that handled the most severe trauma cases in the region and trained thousands of this nation's best physicians, sits shuttered due to greed and neglect. This is the hard truth, and until we deal with that incredibly harsh reality, thousands of sick residents will go without needed health care, languish, suffer and die, or we will never regain the vibrant population this region needs to reach its full potential as the nation's Third Coast.

So what's the problem? Money. The state of Louisiana told FEMA that Charity Hospital sustained $492 million in damage due to the storm. FEMA told the state that figure is preposterous, and the actual loss is somewhere in the neighborhood of $99 million, but it would tack-on an additional $51 million as "to accelerate the recovery of the health care system." And so, the bureaucrats are playing chicken - who's going to blink first?

The truth of the matter is FEMA is probably correct in its assessment. Louisiana State University (LSU), the manager of Charity Hospital, saw an opportunity after Katrina to replace Charity with a new $1.2 billion teaching hospital and medical complex. So the state figured - let's keep the place closed, allow the facility to deteriorate, and eventually someone is going to pay to clean up this mess. Indeed, according to then Commander General Russel Honore, "Katrina was not the only catastrophe for the poor of New Orleans. The event has been used as an opportunity to close the doors of Charity Hospital, which since 1736, maintained a mission of treating the indigent and educating healthcare professionals..."

In the wake of the Hurricane Katrina, the Greater New Orleans community suffered from a rash of physical trauma cases that went untreated. Equally troubling, the mental health crisis in the Greater New Orleans area is worse than in many developing countries. The facility now housing the largest number of beds for individuals suffering mental health crisis: Orleans Parish Prison.

But the healthcare advocates and supporters of Charity Hospital are not taking the loss of this facility lying down. Beginning in early 2006, this community began to organize (1/29 post) - slowly to be certain - concerning the failure of to provide medical care to our most needy.   Brad Ott, a community organizer and former Charity Hospital patient, began meeting with fellow patients and then other organizers and advocates petitioning the State of Louisiana to reopen this facility, which by-the-by, had been renovated for use immediately after the storm. They formed a group, The Committee to Reopen Charity, which has served as a resource and research group that provides real-time data on Charity Hospital's viability.

Louisiana Justice Institute, the non-profit civil rights legal advocacy group joined by several local attorneys, Boston health advocate Stephen Rosenfeld, and the law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, then filed the now pending class-action lawsuit against the Louisiana State University demanding that Charity Hospital be re-opened.

It is this combination of grassroots advocacy and impact litigation that we believe will bring justice to the people demanding healthcare access in the Greater New Orleans area. To be certain, no one should ever be allowed to play chicken with folks' lives, and we plan to remove politics from this game.