Another Person Dies In An Emergency Room. What Have We Come To?

Esmin Green died untreated on the floor of Kings County Hospital in New York, and six employees were disciplined. She joins Edith Isabel Rodriguez who died last year at Martin Luther King Jr. - Harbor Hospital in Los Angeles. The difference? At least the other patients in Los Angeles tried to get help for the victim.

When one hears of these stories, one can't help be struck by the wrongness of this situation. How can these incidents happen. How can people die writhing on the floor of an emergency waiting room at a hospital in the United States? "Those people" - the staff on duty - should be punished. What is lost is that the lack of response and concern of the staff at either of these facilities were not solely responsible. This type of negligence is a reflection of a systemic issue. It speaks volumes that both of these facilities at opposite sides of the country are the tattered remnants of public health care in the United States.

When staff at hospitals, or anywhere else, do not respond to those needing their help with such indifference unless there is a culture of indifference. The deaths of Green and Rodriguez are reflective of a degeneration of our society.

It is not accidental that both of the facilities involved were public. Overwhelmingly, health care in the United States has been privatized (thanks to Ronald Reagan). What shreds of public healthcare that remains largely serves those who have few resources and little (if any) healthcare coverage. Where they exist, private facilities foist these medical indigents onto the public facilities. Those facilities are generally underfunded and deteriorating. In short they largely serve the poor - and disproportionately racial and ethnic minorities.

That staff in Los Angeles and in New York could respond with such indifference points to the dehumanization of the "lower" classes. The nation saw this in the broad coverage of situations of the people in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. While Katrina highlighted the hollow shell the U.S. government has become, it also pointed to the tremendous inequities in our society. In New Orleans, the patients in the public hospital were left to die, while helicopters evacuated patients from the nearby upscale - private - hospital. The message? Those without resources are both unworthy of help and expendable.

There is a level of dehumanization in this country that is appalling. It is blatantly in our faces with the avoidable deaths of these two women. Both these situations are stunning in their own way. In Los Angeles, other patients recognized a crisis and tried to get help both within the hospital and by calling the police - neither responded. In New York, nobody responded - not the other patients, nor medical or security staff. King-Harbor in LA now does only ambulatory services. At Kings County in New York, six staff have been suspended.

Soon, the death of Esmin Green will drop from public view as Ms. Rodriguez' death dropped out of sight, as those still displaced by Katrina have largely become invisible. But then, that is typical of the United States and how we prefer the poor and infirm to be - invisible. Beggars and the homeless are rousted out of "polite" company, or driven by police out of town in smaller communities. The message has been clear for as long as I have been alive. If you are poor, keep a low profile, and be grateful for anything anyone gives to you. Just as the patients of the tattered public health services should shut up and be glad that to have any care at all. Of course, any time the dispossessed raise their voices, the best they can hope for is to be studiously ignored. The response of forcibly silencing them is not an uncommon response.

As costs rise and the economy slumps, more and more of those who were previously among the acceptable semi-privileged are joining the ranks of the dispossessed. Will it still be acceptable to make them invisible? Will it still be acceptable to value the lives of the dispossessed less? I guess we will see if the United States has a conscience, or a change of heart.