Last week the city of New Orleans broke ground on a new hospital in the East. That’s right. The city of New Orleans broke ground on a $130 million medical center off Reed Blvd at the old Methodist Hospital site behind the old Plaza shopping center.
There is no doubt that the citizens of New Orleans East deserve and need quality medical care but at what cost to the city? The private medical industry that operates thousands of hospitals all across America chose to stay out of the East. They obviously felt that area could not naturally support a hospital; that it wouldn’t be profitable. The Landrieu administration thinks otherwise.
What the Landrieu administration should have been thinking is, how do we get with St. Bernard Parish and build a joint hospital that serves both communities? Instead, backwards St. Bernard Parish wanted to build their own, primarily white hospital, while New Orleans East and the city was equally hell-bent on building their own, primarily black hospital.
What a joke. Racist leaders in both parishes living like its 1973, not 2013.
A single, larger, more advanced hospital should be built near or on the Orleans/St. Bernard Parish line serving both communities. The biggest losers of these ill-conceived projects are the residents of St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans East, and of course, all the tax payers of both parishes.
