Can we learn from looking at problems that plagued New Orleans health care system?
• Poor health care infrastructure before Katrina. Louisiana was ranked 49th out of 50 states in health care outcomes. Post Katrina plans abound to improve its health care system, but the essential ingredients—adequate funding, careful planning and coordination—are still questionable. Clinics, private practices, hospitals, pharmacies, patient transportation: all still need strengthening one year later. • Widespread poverty pre and post Katrina. The fact that many poor New Orleanians, mostly blacks, remained for days and weeks in a severely flooded New Orleans, because there was not the means to evacuate them came as a surprise to many Americans. The fact that many, elderly frail people were left behind to die unnecessarily was a cause for shame throughout America. Can this poverty be addressed successfully in a city with half the population and many fewer jobs. It will require the political will, careful and coordinated planning, much work and much money to remedy. • Inadequate catastro
