King/Drew: Who’s to blame?

Re “Symptom of a Body in Distress,” Oct. 1

The 10 million residents of the nation’s largest county are ill-served by the five blundering monarchs who make up the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. How many more Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center catastrophes will it take before the citizenry is shaken from its torpor and demands a leadership structure designed to be proactive instead of reactive?

It is time to revisit the proposal for an elected chief executive -- a county “mayor” -- and a legislative body of at least nine members.

HAROLD N. BASS

Porter Ranch

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Re “Hospital Turmoil to Affect Staffing,” Oct. 2

King/Drew employees do such a pathetic job that the hospital loses federal funding and has to be shut down, causing turmoil in the entire county’s healthcare programs. The best of them were lax in not reporting the egregious conduct of their co-workers, which, at best, was a waste of precious resources and, at worst, the cause of death for some patients. And people wonder why movements to privatize government services have adherents.

Now the question becomes: To which county-run healthcare facility should they be reassigned? I suggest Caltrans, working on the side of the road, next to people doing community service. They sure didn’t do much before. The supervisors who allowed this to happen should be right behind them.

DAVE GOODWIN

Los Angeles