FEMALE NEWSREADER:
LAURA SULLIVAN:
MALE NEWSREADER:
It’s a huge problem not just in the Latino community, but also in the Black community.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
This is a story about those hospitals, largely government-funded, whose primary mission is to care for the poor and uninsured. They’re called safety-net hospitals.
BRAD SPELLBERG, M.D., Chief Med. Director, LAC+USC:
Why are safety nets hit the hardest? Because our patients are vulnerable. We serve a community of working poor. We serve people who are working essential jobs.
Buenos días, señor.
Homeless patients. Patients with mental illness. Substance abuse addiction disorder. We are expected to care for the patients the other hospitals won’t care for.
Yehyun Kim :: CT Mirror
A healthcare workers union, SEIU 1199, rallies outside the State Capitol last July as the pandemic raged. They asked for providing personal protection equipment to frontline workers, holding private sectors such as nursing homes accountable and strict social distancing.
For the past year frontline health care workers stood in the way of danger, working throughout the pandemic in nursing homes, home care, substance-abuse counseling and helping children in need. Yet, somehow, health care workers and their patients are forgotten in Connecticut’s proposed budget, freezing or even cutting spending for workers and services urgently needed by the state’s most fragile populations.