I spotted this story on MM and I read the linked articles carefully to make sure this was not just an attempt to smear the name of our First Lady.
Unfortunately, it appears that Michelle Obama caved in to the pressure from the powerful board of the University of Chicago Medical Center, and helped create a program to divert poor, black patients away from the hospital’s emergency room to poorly funded hood clinics where they would receive substandard care.
Sen. Barack Obama’s wife and three close advisers have been involved with a program at the University of Chicago Medical Center that steers patients who don’t have private insurance — primarily poor, black people — to other health care facilities.
Michelle Obama — currently on unpaid leave from her $317,000-a-year job as a vice president of the prestigious hospital — helped create the program, which aims to find neighborhood doctors for low-income people who were flooding the emergency room for basic treatment. Hospital officials say such patients hinder their ability to focus on more critically ill patients in need of specialized care, such as cancer treatment and organ transplants. [You know, where the real money can be made]
To be fair, many hospitals are accused of turning away uninsured patients. But patient dumping schemes like Michelle’s tend to fail because the patients don’t receive quality care at the poorly staffed and poorly funded hood clinics. The result is their health deteriorates and they end up back at the emergency room where they started.
