NPR has been running an investigative story that managed even now to shock me senseless. Nobody else has touched it among the media or even the blogs, as far as I can see.
One floor of NOLO’s Memorial Hospital was leased to a nursing home.
There, doctors and nurses were faced with few options. Conditions were deteriorating rapidly, evacuations were sporadic and security was compromised. Staff agonized whether to attempt to transport critically ill patients who might not survive the arduous evacuation. It appears another choice was considered: whether to end the lives of those who could not be moved. In the court documents reviewed by NPR, none of four key witnesses say they knew who made the decision to administer lethal doses of painkillers to the patients. But all four heard discussions that a decision had been made to end patients’ lives. According to the documents, attorneys for LifeCare self-reported all of this to the Louisiana attorney general’s office on Sept. 14, 2005.
That patients were killed seems factual. Whether those who made that decision deserve prison or praise is less clear. Listen to the NPR reports and decide for yourself. In all the heartbreaking reports, recriminations, and testimony about Katrina, nothing has shaken me like this story. Nothing has slammed home the horror and the criminal incompetence and indifference that revealed the mighty US of A as a pathetic banana republic like this story. Even after all those TV hours with Katrina, nothing has made me tear my hair and scream “How could this happen?” like this.
Listen to the audio, to the personal stories and interviews. They may change you forever.