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Washington, D.C. citizens, particularly the poor, have yet to wake up to the realization that D.C. General Hospital is about to be destroyed. Why? Because they have yet to realize, that the nation is about to disappear, and with it, D.C. General.
As LaRouche has said, the world has entered the greatest financial, monetary and economic crisis in centuries. Nothing can save the presently hopelessly bankrupt system. Whether the United States survives its own folly of the past 30 years, or instead self-destructs by implementing ``emergency decrees'' to subjugate a population in revolt against its own elimination, through the abolishing of health care, electricity, schools and transportatiion, depends on our reassertion of the idea of the General Welfare. The fight to save D.C. General Hospital gives the nation--not only D.C. citizens--the opportunity to revive that commitment.
Many years ago, Thomas Malthus made a clear statement of this policy. ``Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the ocuntry, we should build our villages near stagnant pools.... But above all we should reprobate specific measures for ravaging diseases; and restrain those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they are doing a service to mankind by protecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders.'' He wanted to kill people.
Since 1973, a Malthusian policy has been in effect globally. Over 29 new diseases have emerged worldwide, due in large part to the abrogation of the commitment of the 1960s to the eradication of poverty, hunger, and disease throughout the world. Instead, we ``globalized'' disease through the globalization policies of the Thatcher and Bush Sr. administrations. The spread of AIDS, BSE, and the re-emergence of diseases once controlled, including treatment-resistant tuberculosis, now put all mankind into jeopardy. This is a willful, deliberate consequence of these monetary and speculative poliies.
The battle for the preservation of D.C. General Hospital occurs in that national, and international, context.
In his infamous memo of Jan. 3, 1969, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote, ``the Negro lower class must be dissolved.... It is the existence of this lower class, with its high rates of crime, dependency, and general disorderliness, that causes nearby whites to fear Negroes and to seek by various ways to avoid and constrain them.'' The same Moynihan, notorious for the 1970 statement that the black population should be treated with ``benign neglect'' by the Nixon administration, was the earliest critic of medical benefits to the poor, established through the 1965 Medicaid and Medicare programs: ``The man who Nixon appointed to head up his newly created Council on Urban Affairs, Daniel P. Moynihan, believes that the cities cannot be saved by the Washington government.... Moynihan's decentralism will probably work out in practice to mean that more essential social services will be turned over to business, and operated on a profit making basis,'' wrote one commentator in 1970.
That is precisely what happened to health care--thanks to Moynihan, and Nixon Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) Secretaries Elliot Richardson and Caspar Weinberger (known in 1973 as ``Cap the Knife'' for his draconian cuts in services), and those who followed them. It is wishful thinking, however, to believe that the purpose of privatizing health care was ``to make a killing on the health-care industry.'' The purpose of privatizing health care was, and is, to ``make many killings,'' and to thus ``dissolve'' the poor black underclass that is serviced by D.C. General Hospital.
And should this creates chaos, they are prepared. Animosity and prejudice against the D.C. population, dominated for over 100 years by the Confederate racists that ran the Congressional committees that oversaw the District's affairs, has already placed emergency measures into law, that would certainly be defended by the likes of a Thomas/Scalia/Rehnquist Supreme Court, or an Ashcroft. For example, on May 6, 1968, following the upheaval that had occurred in Washington (and elsewhere) immediately after the April 4 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, the House Un-American Activities Committee issued a memo, entitled ``Guerrilla Warfare Advocates in the United States.'' It detailed numerous police-state measures, including sealing off the ghetto, and suspending civil liberties. We quote two sections:
``3) During a guerrilla uprising, most civil liberties would have to be suspended, search and seizure operations would be instituted during the daylight hours, and anyone found armed or without proper identification would immediately be arrested.|...Would these, or more extreme measures, be implemented against a D.C. population that refused to accept, as the economic crisis deepens, the intentional destruction of health care, education, and other city services? That is one, policy option. - The Alternative is the General Welfare -``5) The population within the ghetto would be exhorted to work with the authorities, and to report, both on guerrillas, and any suspicious activity they might note. The police agencies would be in a position to make immediate arrests, without warrants, under suspension of guarantees usually provided by the Constitution.''
Contrasted to this, is the idea of the General Welfare. In a Jan. 3, 2001 webcast, Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche pointed out that ``the fundamental principle of a republican form of government, as opposed to a government which is owned by some person or class of people, [is] that the only legitimate authority of government to exist, is its authority and responsibility for promotion of the General Welfare of all living persons and their posterity.
``So therefore, in that sense, the right to health care is implicitly, under U.S. Constitutional law, a Constitutional right. Now Franklin Roosevelt, for example, was the last President who made that very clear in his fight against the Supreme Court, and against Wall Street, where he said, the General Welfare is the fundamental law of the United States, the Constitutional law, and [he] adopted emergency measures intended to provide for the general welfare.''This is what must be done in the case of D.C. General Hospital. It is dishonest to merely demand that the hospital be kept open. The hospital must be restored to 100% operating capacity, including beds, equipment, and personnel. There must also be a new facility constructed next to the present hospital, which dates back to 1806. This must be done in the context of returning the nation to the 1947 Hill-Burton policy, abandoned in 1973, which mandates a ratio of 4.5-5.5 general-use hospital beds for every 1,000 Americans--a massive expansion of the nation's health care facilities.
None of this can be accomplished in the context of the murderous HMO policies of today. The HMOs should simply be abolished. We should return to a General Welfare form of health care, which we had an approximation of up until the 1970s in parts of the U.S. - Nazi Genocide in D.C. -
The extermination policy for D.C., the nation's capital, has already begun. The process began, as with the Nazis, with ``little murders'' of the ``we just couldn't help it'' variety.
An exaggeration? See the cases of those who have already died, in the accompanying box.
And consider this: According to Dr. Millicent Collin, chief of pediatrics at D.C. General, the hospital has a Level 3 neonatal intensive-care capability. This means that the hospital can take care of high-risk pregnancies. For example, an infant delivered pre-term, who may need respiratory care, and to be put on a ventilator, must be cared for within the first six minutes of birth. If not, he or she will suffer significant brain damage, and other conditions, such as cerebral palsy.
In Southeast Washington, only D.C. General has these capabilities. Greater Southeast Hospital, which is supposed to take over D.C. General's caseload in large part, has no Level 3 capability. Southeast Community cannot take care of babies born, weighing less than 2.5 pounds. Greater Southeast Community has no pediatric emergency, no pediatric Level 1 trauma capability, and, as a result, the child, after delivery, is likely to die. That's all right, however, as this will mean ``no long term health-care costs.''
Further, Greater Southeast, a for-profit hospital, rated below D.C. General, already has a patient base that is over 60% uninsured. What will be their incentive for giving emergency treatment to indigent residents? D.C. General services 60% of all uninsured people in the entire city (about 100,000)! D.C. General has 53,000 emergency-room visits a year. Once the emergency room is eliminated there, where will these people go?
Finally, the District has lost 42.1% of all beds--2700--since 1995. How can the other hospitals possibly take up the caseload, even if they wanted to?
The entire approach to the idea of health care, exemplified by the HMO privatization of Medicaid in Washington D.C., is intended to proliferate disease, increase infant mortality, lower life expectancy. Why? The unfolding, now undeniable collapse of the world's financial and monetary system, has rendered the citizens of Washington D.C. ``redundant,'' as Heinrich Himmler so daintily suggested in another context: the intent of the Nazis to exterminate the populations of Eastern Europe, in the pursuit of greater ``lebensraum''--living space--for the nearly as impoverished German population. There is no more living space, no more toleration, to be given, in this age of ``compassionate conservatism,'' to the poor. There is only ``death-space'' available, to the which you will be assisted by the gauleiters of the Financial Control Board, or the Mayor's office.
Of course, Mayor Williams, or members of the Control Board, or members of Congress, would not wish to be identified with Nazi policies. Then again, who does? Which of the Nazis on trial at Nuremberg wanted to be identified with crimes against humanity? Their denial of their role, and intent, even if in some cases sincere, did not change the content of their actions.
On March 1, 1933, two stories appeared side by side in the New York Times. One story, entitled ``House Held Sure to Pass Bankruptcy Bill; Roosevelt Influence Wins Railway Aid ``reported that ``Under the impetus of President-elect Roosevelt's influence, the House ... will pass the bankruptcy bill as it was passed in the Senate, including protection for railroads and corporations ... which might be suffering temporarily, from being thrown hastily into destructive receiverships.''
This was the origin of what is today known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows a bank, or a hospital, or other entity to continue to provide essential services without being closed by creditors. Prior to this time, there was no provision in the Federal bankruptcy code for reorganization. There was only liquidation. But today, necessary services like hospitals, under our Constitution, can be saved by Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Next to this article, there appeared another. Its headline read: ``Hitler Suspends Reich Guarantees, Left Press Banned: Emergency Decree to Combat Communist Terror Voids Constitutional Safeguards.'' The article records that the ``Notverordnung,'' the emergency decree, ``suspended all constitutional articles guaranteeing private property, personal liberty, freedom of the press, secrecy of postal communications and the right to hold meetings and form associations.|...''
Thus, in 1933, there were two different ideas of how to deal with the ``state of emergency'' brought about by the economic collapse. There was the ``Hitler-way,'' and there was the ``Roosevelt'' way, an emergency declared on behalf of the general welfare, and implemented to preserve the life, health, and well-being of the individual.
The maintenance of D.C. General Hospital, and the public hospital system of the United States, just as is true of the public schools, public roads, and the public water and power systems, is the duty of the U.S. citizenry. We are in a crisis now, that dwarfs that which Roosevelt encountered in 1932. Whether we have the Roosevelt measures, today championed by Lyndon LaRouche, or the Hitler policy measures, now being imposed by the Southern Strategy racists, is the choice of ``we the people.''
``Once to every man and nation, there comes a moment to decide.'' What will you decide? Return to Top
Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which governed the trial of Nazi war criminals, defines ``Crimes Against Humanity'' as: ``murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population ... whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.... The murder and ill-treatment were carried out by diverse means including ... inadequate provision of surgical and medical services.|...'' (emphasis added)
The following deaths have occurred since the beginning of 2001, as a result of the budget cuts at D.C. General Hospital:
FIRST VICTIM: Jewell C. Myers; 57 year old black female; died 1/13/01. Victim taken by EMS to D.C. General, suffering from congestive heart failure, treated for two hours in emergency room, and then told to see her regular doctor at Washington Hospital Center, the next day, because there, her insurance (Kaiser) would cover the cost. She was sent home, where she died two hours later. SOURCE: Rev. Clarence Turner, victim's brother.
SECOND VICTIM: Unknown; 31-year-old black male; died 2/1/01; Patient initially transported via Fire Department ambulance to Greater Southeast Hospital. Upon arrival, it was determined that he had suffered a gunshot wound to the chest. Patient then transported to D.C. General Trauma Center, where he expired. This incident is now being investigated for possible violation of CFR 4889.24, ``Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.'' SOURCE: Washington Post and DC General Hospital reports.
THIRD VICTIM: Unknown; 16-year-old black male; 2001; Youth shot three blocks from D.C. General, but could not be taken there because the ER Trauma unit was closed, due to lack of staff, and a breakdown in the generators to open and close the doors, due to lack of maintenance. Victim had to be transported across town by EMS to Med-Star Hospital, where he died on the ramp entering the hospital. SOURCE: Paramedics with DC Fire Department
If you have information on these or other incidents, where budget cutbacks have contributed to the deaths of individuals, please report them to (202) 544-7087.
1) House Gov't Reform and Oversight; D.C. Subcommittee
``The Committee is deeply concerned that the District must act immediately to stop the fiscal hemorrhaging that is occurring at the Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), which operates D.C. General Hospital. For the past 30 months the PBC has run a monthly deficit, now reaching $2.5 million per month.|...``By failing to address the problem of the PBC and the associated hospital, the District and Control Board have made matters worse. They have lost the opportunity to correct the underlying mismanagement, cost taxpayers many millions of dollars, and destroyed any confidence that any new proposed solution would be better than past proposals. The greater threat to public health in the District is not the potential closing of D.C. General Hospital, but in letting it continue to siphon off precious health-care dollars without providing an equal value of benefit to the public.|...
``Just as bad as the financial failure, is the failure of political will to address this problem. The Committee is disappointed that officials have preferred to procrastinate and spend, rather than risk the unhappiness of the political constituencies involved in the PBC and D.C. General Hospital.
``No matter how good any current proposals may sound in this area, the Committee has no faith in the political will power of District officials to follow through with them.|...'' (emphasis added)
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