Health Care: Emergency for Emergency Rooms

“Politics at Health’s Expense” (editorial, Dec. 6) is misguided and shortsighted. There are two issues at play here. First, there is the long-term need to develop a health authority to govern and add accountability to a health care delivery system that has failed to maintain a quality product at reasonable expense to the citizens of this county. The second issue is the overwhelming need to maintain an emergency infrastructure within our emergency medical services system to take care of our most immediate needs and to be prepared for any public health crisis that might present itself.

Unfortunately, the EMS infrastructure has already deteriorated to the point where the Board of Supervisors needed to make these most-urgent decisions or risk not having any system to govern at all. The only thing “political” about funding emergency care is that every board member clearly understood the political disaster that would be created should any part of that system be forced to shut down due to accreditation failure.

Marcy L. Zwelling-Aamot MD

Secretary, Los Angeles County Hospital Commission

Los Alamitos