Mrs. O And The Patient Dump

By Bob Parks —— Bio and Archives June 20, 2009

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It wasn't until white America accepted her husband that she was finally proud of America. The same America that allowed the hospital she worked for to screw over the same underprivileged her better half was organizing to raise his own political stature.

The fact she's become the First Lady won't erase the past, and we should all be wary of the kind of health care her husband has in store for us.

The White House, Democrats and MoveOn liberals are spreading health care sob stories to sell a government takeover. But there's one health care policy nightmare you won't hear the Obamas hyping. It's a tale of poor minority patient-dumping at the University of Chicago Medical Center—with first lady Michelle Obama's fingerprints all over it. In fiscal year 2007, when Mrs. Obama was employed there, it spent a measly $10 million on charity care for the poor—1.3 percent of its total hospital expenses, according to an analysis performed for The Washington Post by the nonpartisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. The figure is below the 2.1 percent average for nonprofit hospitals in surrounding Cook County.

The media has propped Michelle O as The One who we should all want to emulate and admire. But the gaze she was photographed issuing to Carla Bruni shows a mean side. So mean, that her participating in kicking the poor to the curb is something entirely plausible and so cold-blooded.