Passersby

NY Cousins Are Calling About Grady

I’m holding the NEW YORK TIMES (Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009, p. A18). The page features a picture of Grady Memorial Hospital and three pictures (large ones): two women and a man who will die very soon without Dialysis Clinic treatment. The Grady corporate, privatized board of their safety-net charity hospital has voted to pull the plug on 92 kidney patients. The “illegal immigrant” 32 year old mother of the 5 year old in another blog told attorney Lindsey Jones today (Sept. 29) that she has given up. She will go home to die in Honduras.
My blue-haired Presbyterian cousins read my blog. They were more than a little upset with my questioning the Grady corporate board’s decision to let people die. They did not believe my report. In fact my not too blue stocking language ruffled their country club feathers. You read the unsavory adjective modifying Atlanta leadership. I apologize for those bad words.

Now that my cousins have read the similar report in the NEW YORK TIMES, I have credibility. Please go to newyorktimes.com Grady Hospital. Read and weep.

Has Atlanta’s Leadership Gone Bat-Shit Mad?

Today, September 10, 2009, The Grady Coalition held a press conference on the steps of Fulton County’s Grady Hospital. Dr. Neil Shulman, other physicians, nurses and three kidney patients spoke passionately to 100 people. The press conference was called in order to beg the new privatized Board of Directors of the hospital to continue dialysis treatment for 90 patients. The Board announced several months ago its decision to close the Dialysis Clinic. No other hospital in Atlanta offers this treatment to indegent patients.

Anyone over 12 and awake in Atlanta knows that our City has not been “poor friendly” for the last dozen years. In fact, Atlanta’s leadership has labored to exterminate the homeless population since the Campbell Administration. The Atlanta Housing Authority headed by Renee Glover is yet another exterminator of housing for the under belly of Atlanta’s populace. AHA like housing authorities across America is no longer an organization that welcomes the poorest of the poor. And the “low lifes” that Glover’s regime has put on the streets are not considered worthy of the upgraded housing of the Atlanta Housing Authority. Thirteen housing communities under the umbrella of AHA have been leveled within the last 36 months.

But Grady Hospital! The last bastion of medical care for the poor! The latest victims of the War Against the Poor are not homeless people. It is understandable that Atlanta, the city too busy to hate, would do away with homeless people and the lower than low income renters. Those folks are unsightly. They are not pretty. There’s no place for them in Horace Sibley’s Tourists’ Triangle or Central Atlanta’s Sanitized Zone. The homeless folks from Peachtree-Pine smell bad. Ratchet Rob Hunter has seen to that as he has lived up to his name, Ratchet Rob “I’ll turn your water off” Hunter.

But not Grady! Reason dictates that a hospital would be the last place the corporate vultures would invade. WRONG. It is beyond imagination what has happened. Over the protest of a few Fulton Count Board of Commissioners, Grady Hospital has become a privatized business, answering only to a corporate board. The most recent result of privatization is the Board’s decision to shut down the Dialysis Clinic, presently serving 90 patients. The clinic according to the board is not economically feasible. The fiscally responsible board has counted the cost, a short fall of $4,000,000. To hell with the 90 people whose lives depent on this treatment. Besides 60 of them are from other countries, anyway. To be sure most of them won’t live long, anyway.

Tell that to the five-year-old boy holding a sign that reads: “Keep the Dialysis Clinic Open.” The little fellow’s 34 year-old mother will die if she misses one treatment. This five-year old will feel first hand the claw of privatization, the hammer of fiscal responsibility. Along side this lad stood eight adult patients whose lives will be snuffed out without dialysis treatment. The clinic is scheduled to close September 20. That’s TEN days from this writing.

What can be done? Public outcry may make a difference. Enough clamor just might bring about an injunction from, say, Fulton County Superior Court to enjoin Grady Hospital to continue dialysis treatment for all who need it.

Perhaps in a better world every board member who voted to close the clinic would be charged with attempted murder. And if one living soul dies from lack of treatment, let that charge be changed to MURDER.

Can you imagine that five-year-old boy having to hold that sign in a civilized country that has universal health care: Canada, Great Britain, Scotland, the Scandanavian countries and others.

I dedicate this “bat-shit mad” piece to the honorable U. S. Congressman Joseph “mind your manners now” Wilson of South Carolina. He’s the man who shouted, “You lie” during President Obama’s address to the nation on health care. Imagine if you dare an elected American official outraged that human beings, not to his liking, might receive health care insurance that would pay medical expenses. What have we become? Where will we stand at the day of reckoning? When will leadership ever take us back home again?

Is Atlanta the home of Dr. King? Who could ever tell it? Jeremiah 6.14 “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.” Should you read this blog I beg you to tell two people of the proposed Grady Massacre. Please shout from the housetops the outrage, one more atrocity committed by the city we love, the city we have lost. Tell you church. Tell your mosque. Tell your synagogue. Tell a judge. Pray for the 90 victims and their grieving families. Call the White House. Bombard the Outhouse. Ask every mayoral candidate what he or she would do to save the Dialysis Clinic.

James Wilson Beaty, PhD
Jeremiah 22.16

Has Atlanta's Leadership Gone Bat-Shit Mad?

Today, September 10, 2009, The Grady Coalition held a press conference on the steps of Fulton County’s Grady Hospital. Dr. Neil Shulman, other physicians, nurses and three kidney patients spoke passionately to 100 people. The press conference was called in order to beg the new privatized Board of Directors of the hospital to continue dialysis treatment for 90 patients. The Board announced several months ago its decision to close the Dialysis Clinic. No other hospital in Atlanta offers this treatment to indegent patients.

Anyone over 12 and awake in Atlanta knows that our City has not been “poor friendly” for the last dozen years. In fact, Atlanta’s leadership has labored to exterminate the homeless population since the Campbell Administration. The Atlanta Housing Authority headed by Renee Glover is yet another exterminator of housing for the under belly of Atlanta’s populace. AHA like housing authorities across America is no longer an organization that welcomes the poorest of the poor. And the “low lifes” that Glover’s regime has put on the streets are not considered worthy of the upgraded housing of the Atlanta Housing Authority. Thirteen housing communities under the umbrella of AHA have been leveled within the last 36 months.

But Grady Hospital! The last bastion of medical care for the poor! The latest victims of the War Against the Poor are not homeless people. It is understandable that Atlanta, the city too busy to hate, would do away with homeless people and the lower than low income renters. Those folks are unsightly. They are not pretty. There’s no place for them in Horace Sibley’s Tourists’ Triangle or Central Atlanta’s Sanitized Zone. The homeless folks from Peachtree-Pine smell bad. Ratchet Rob Hunter has seen to that as he has lived up to his name, Ratchet Rob “I’ll turn your water off” Hunter.

But not Grady! Reason dictates that a hospital would be the last place the corporate vultures would invade. WRONG. It is beyond imagination what has happened. Over the protest of a few Fulton Count Board of Commissioners, Grady Hospital has become a privatized business, answering only to a corporate board. The most recent result of privatization is the Board’s decision to shut down the Dialysis Clinic, presently serving 90 patients. The clinic according to the board is not economically feasible. The fiscally responsible board has counted the cost, a short fall of $4,000,000. To hell with the 90 people whose lives depent on this treatment. Besides 60 of them are from other countries, anyway. To be sure most of them won’t live long, anyway.

Tell that to the five-year-old boy holding a sign that reads: “Keep the Dialysis Clinic Open.” The little fellow’s 34 year-old mother will die if she misses one treatment. This five-year old will feel first hand the claw of privatization, the hammer of fiscal responsibility. Along side this lad stood eight adult patients whose lives will be snuffed out without dialysis treatment. The clinic is scheduled to close September 20. That’s TEN days from this writing.

What can be done? Public outcry may make a difference. Enough clamor just might bring about an injunction from, say, Fulton County Superior Court to enjoin Grady Hospital to continue dialysis treatment for all who need it.

Perhaps in a better world every board member who voted to close the clinic would be charged with attempted murder. And if one living soul dies from lack of treatment, let that charge be changed to MURDER.

Can you imagine that five-year-old boy having to hold that sign in a civilized country that has universal health care: Canada, Great Britain, Scotland, the Scandanavian countries and others.

I dedicate this “bat-shit mad” piece to the honorable U. S. Congressman Joseph “mind your manners now” Wilson of South Carolina. He’s the man who shouted, “You lie” during President Obama’s address to the nation on health care. Imagine if you dare an elected American official outraged that human beings, not to his liking, might receive health care insurance that would pay medical expenses. What have we become? Where will we stand at the day of reckoning? When will leadership ever take us back home again?

Is Atlanta the home of Dr. King? Who could ever tell it? Jeremiah 6.14 “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.” Should you read this blog I beg you to tell two people of the proposed Grady Massacre. Please shout from the housetops the outrage, one more atrocity committed by the city we love, the city we have lost. Tell you church. Tell your mosque. Tell your synagogue. Tell a judge. Pray for the 90 victims and their grieving families. Call the White House. Bombard the Outhouse. Ask every mayoral candidate what he or she would do to save the Dialysis Clinic.

James Wilson Beaty, PhD
Jeremiah 22.16