A health care crisis in Los Angeles grabs presidential campaign attention. Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich (D) Ohio, plans a meeting Monday with hundreds of local leaders.
LOS ANGELES -- Clinics, health centers, and community organizations in Los Angeles say they are facing a crisis with the pulling of federal funds from a hospital serving hundreds of thousands of poor and uninsured patients. In what is expected to be one of the largest-ever gatherings of community health officials and health care activists in L.A. County history, local leaders will meet with Ohio Congressman and Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich Monday morning (August 13) in the hope of bringing national attention and possible federal action to a deepening crisis.
Kucinich has introduced legislation that would address the problems of uninsured and under-insured Americans.
Local officials say the crisis, they say, was exacerbated Friday when federal officials announced they were pulling funding from the troubled county-run Martin Luther King Jr. Harbor Hospital, all but shutting it down.
The Monday meeting is being organized by Jim Mangia, chief executive officer of St. John's Well Child and Family Center, one of the hundred-or-more non-profit clinics and medical facilities that provide primary care services to impoverished neighborhoods in the county. The meeting was originally planned to be a forum to discuss poverty and national health insurance and a launching pad for a voter registration drive targeting an estimated one million uninsured, non- registered residents.
The announced closing of King-Harbor has brought new urgency to the issues, Mangia said, and the hope is to bring "Presidential-level" attention to the crisis. He said that directors from every community clinic and health center in the county will be at the meeting, as well as representatives from economic justice and community action groups.
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Kucinich is co-author of H.R. 676, a bill that would provide a national, not-for-profit health insurance plan that would provide comprehensive medical coverage for all Americans with no premiums, no co-pays, and no deductibles. Kucinich's bill has been endorsed by the California Nurses Association, National Nurses Organizing Committee, and Physicians for a National Health Program. It has also been endorsed by film-maker Michael Moore, whose scathing documentary, "SiCKO," rips the current for-profit health care system in the United States. Kucinich supporters have been promoting the movie, and Moore has been promoting H.R. 676.
