New Orleans' Uninsured Get Primitive Car

RUKMINI CALLIMACH in yahoo news

"In the same concrete structure where thousands of fleeing families waited in vain for food and water, they now wait for medical care, dispensed by a skeletal staff of doctors working out of a collection of military tents.

Inside their plastic and canvas walls, the doctors can only offer the most rudimentary care: They can X-ray bones, but not set them. They can draw blood and diagnose an ailment, but not treat it beyond prescribing pills. And with no ER and no capacity to operate, they can't do much more than stabilize trauma patients before sending them by ambulance elsewhere, often far away.

These tents are all that remain of Charity Hospital, the 270-year-old institution which for generations was the medical epicenter of the city's uninsured. (more)