So what.

Comments like that are used to dehumanize the victim and make her responsible for her own death. Edith Rodriguez was a patient in an emergency room, who was left to writhe in a pool of her own vomit and blood for 45 minutes. First and foremost she was a human being, one with the disease of addiction.

There is NO EXCUSE for this kind of treatment. It just occurs to me that the people who watched Edith Rodriguez die probably had the same attitude as you. I hope you are neevr allowed to work in a hospital.

I don’t want my tax dollars paying for employees who can watch people die without even trying to help them.

In today’s (7/2/07 )LA Times, Congresswoman Maxine Waters defends Linda Rutlen, the triage nurse who let Edith Rodriguez writhe in pain in the floor for 45 minutes in a pool of her own blood and vomit, saying that Rutlen thought that Rodriguez was “faking pain.”

Was she faking the pool of blood and vomit too?

Waters thinks nothing of exploiting Rodriguez’s death to keep jobs for the incompetent people who work in that hospital. Make no mistake–to her that hospital is nothing but a jobs program.

Sadly, that attitude is why the hospital is now forced to close. If Congresswoman Waters and County Supervisor Braithwaite-Burke placed patient care above jobs for incompetent people, the hospital could simply fire the entire staff and administration and hire qualified people in their place. But they consistently block those efforts, invoking the 1965 Watts riots and the dream of Martin Luther King. Gee, I think Martin would hate the fact that a hospital named after him is now known as “Killer King.”

The public needs to see what happened to Edith Rodriguez to ensure that it doesn’t happen to anybody else. That’s why the LA County Board of Supervisors must release the hospital security video. This hospital is supported by taxpayer dollars, which gives us the right to see the video.

Release the video!!!

insane isnt it !

And by the way, anyone can start an HSA. It doesn’t have to be used along with an insurance plan of any sort. It can be stand-alone, and it operates similar to a Retirement Plan (only you can take money out of it when you have a medical expense). Plus, unlike a Flex plan, the money can be rolled over year after year, and can be cashed out later if you don’t use it.

What do you think about the $15,000 per family tax credit that Bush wants to offer, so that families can purchase their own portable plans without having to deal with ‘Group’ plans that simply are cost-shifters that make those who don’t use insurance pay more? If people can go out and purchase their own plans, this will drive the market costs of insurance down. I think it’s a great idea.

But instead, we have these plans that are mandated by government to cover things like ‘port wine stain removal’ and alcoholism. Minnesota mandates that employer-provided health insurance covers things like this. So why should I have to pay more for my insurance, due to these coverage additions, that I’m never going to use? I’m not an alcoholic, and I don’t have port wine stains, so why does the government mandate coverage of things like this, that only drives up the cost? Well, because it gets certain people elected. Government needs to get less involved in what insurance plans should cover, because it drives up the cost for everyone.

Please excuse me if I don’t want government being the benefactor of my health care.

I don’t see health coverage as a right – for anyone. No one pays my grocery or heating bill, why should the taxpayers pay for my insurance? I need food to stay alive…Should the government pay for that, too?

Unfortunately, we have gotten into the mindset that health coverage and care shouldn’t cost us anything, and that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in. If the government would simply give us a large tax credit, so that we can afford to buy our own portable plans – not connected to anyone else but ourselves, similar to auto insurance – it would most certainly drive the cost down, and wouldn’t cost taxpayers nearly what universal healthcare would.

Thanks for the exchange. I have to get going, because I’m headed to a roundtable discussion of local Human Resource professionals about this very subject. I’ll let you know the report, if you’re interested.

I currently work as an “International Patient Advocate” for person afflicted with “Adhesion Related Disorder (ARD)” and though this disorder has not been confirmed as a condition that Edith Isabel Rodriguez had, in my opinion it very well could be. It is my intentions to secure Mrs. Rodriguez’s autopsy report which will offer to me a more comprehensive look into her prior medical/surgical history, which, if there is anything of a surgical nature existing in that history, will give credence to the probability that “post surgical peritoneal adhesions” were in fact a cause of her pain and multiple ER visits for pain. I can say with certainty that being on analgesics it is no wonder Edith had a bowel obstruction from constipation, which is a side affect of such a medication, and for a person who has a bowel compromised from adhesions, obstruction is a medical emergency which can trigger the results typical of what Edith Isabel Rodriguez experienced -death surrounded by ignorance and hostility within the medical arena.

Adhesions cannot be diagnosed without a surgical procedure, they will NOT show up on any diagnostic tests currently offered in our medical arena – not on a CT Scan, MRI, Contrast Lower Gi series or abdominal X-rays, however, displacement of the intestines, AND ANY obstruction of the intestines will show 100%…but it will NOT show an obstruction, caused by adhesions or not, if these diagnostics are not ordered on the patient!
FACT: #1 death by intestinal obstructions results from intestinal adhesions!
(Physicians will generaly NOT tell a patient if they indeed have intestinal adhesions because most times the adhesions are caused BY the Dr. as in an “iatrogenic” disease, something caused by a Dr. or by the treatment by a Dr!
http://www.adhesionrelateddisorder.com/adhesion7.html

Tammy Wynette died under similar circumstances, and her death was directly related to ARD. Others have as well, unfortunately. I invite, and encourage you to please visit this web site: http://www.adhesionrelateddisorder.com for more information on ARD.

My own mother died in a similar fashion, less harsh then dear Edith, as she laid in her bed and died of a perforated bowel, more “hygenic” way to die verses Ediths death, but no less at the hands of the medical society!

I am hoping that everyone who reads this blog will taking this unfortunate situation and loss of a young mother a step further by acclimating yourselves to a most hideous medical condition that rivals appendectomies, heart bypass surgery and hip replacements in our country, and throughout the world!”

God Bless the Family and friends of Edith, thak-God Edith is with our Lord as her suffering is over, and thiers lives on!