Friday.....America.....Braddock's Defeat?

George Washington visited what is now Braddock, Pennsylvania at least twice in the 1750s. The Battle of the Monongahela, in the French and Indian War saw General Braddock's death hence the name of the town. Andrew Carnegie's first Bessemer Process steel mill began there as did the first of his famous libraries. The November 29th, 1904 issue of the Braddock Daily News announced HOSPITAL AT LAST. It would open in 1906. My mother worked the switchboard at Braddock Hospital after World War II and had nightly visits from a returning soldier who was badly burned on a troop ship from a Kamikaze attack, treated in Cleveland and then recovering at his hometown hospital in Braddock. That soldier was my father whose friends would boost him up to his room window each night after a few beers on Braddock Avenue, that is until this was discovered and he was banned from the hospital for life (according to my mother anyway.) The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), also an insurance company, now runs the hospital and decided in October that it should close in January 2010 due to financial concerns and low patient occupancy. There have been numerous protests, candlelight vigils and claims that closing it violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, for Braddock is a depressed community. Financially, the numbers of citizens in Braddock who use the hospital may be not enough justify keeping the hospital open, but someone at UPMC has to take in consideration that this community has been hit with one adversity after another. They do not need one last humiliation in being told to pack up the car and find their way to another hospital. There are not a lot of votes or political contributions from this area, just people, mostly black who do not have the transportation to just zip over to another community when their breathing is labored or the flu may be setting in. This decision to close Braddock Hospital needs to be put on hold until it can be ascertained that there is no choice but to close the facility, and this not just an economically wise decision. This is not a single payer medical insurance issue. It's a corporate issue that affects people's lives intertwined with their decisions.