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| Sat, 15 Apr 2006 18:00:00 EST Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Fairness and the future |
| America's franchise on the future is endangered. We have triumphed because we are a democracy of free enterprise but also one that seeks to maintain equal opportunity. We do this out of a sense of justice and a pragmatic recognition that the realization of innate talents benefits the whole community. Higher education has been the key. We have had a love affair with it and have seen it open the door to the masses through a combination of philanthropy and state support. Today, however, sadly, that door is beginning to close. |
| Sat, 15 Apr 2006 18:00:00 EST The mad scramble to get into a packed ER |
| It's 3:30 p.m., and first responder Linda Thompson is rushing toward her 10th emergency of the day: Edward Williams Jr., an 84-year-old man with a history of both triple and quadruple bypass surgery, has reported pain in his neck and jaw. When the East Jefferson, La., paramedic arrives in her SUV, she takes Williams's vital signs, asks about his medical history, starts to attach a monitor-defibrillator to his chest--and wonders what happened to the ambulance. "Where's my transport?" she shouts into her radio. |
| Sat, 15 Apr 2006 18:00:00 EST Against-the-odds struggle to care for the infirm in New Orleans |
| NEW ORLEANS--Peter DeBlieux always pictured himself working in a tent one day. It just "wasn't in this country." A veteran emergency-room physician, DeBlieux is inside a tent pitched in an abandoned Lord & Taylor store just a few blocks from where he once ran one of the busiest ERs in the United States. That would be New Orleans's Charity Hospital, but, thanks to Hurricane Katrina, DeBlieux can't go back there. The flood that followed Katrina knocked out Charity's electricity and water. Patients and staff spent five grueling days trapped in the hospital in 100-degree heat, rationing drinking water, and hand-squeezing "ambu" bags to keep ventilator patients alive. |
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