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122 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
Trouble at Grady: Local Symptoms,
National Crisis, by Murphy Davis
J u n e 1 9 9 9
The county commissioner looked perplexed. “You understand, don’t you,
that we’re the bottom of the food chain here. You’re coming to us because you
know who and where we are. But we’re not the real cause of this crisis at Grady
Hospital. It’s much bigger than DeKalb and Fulton counties.”
She is absolutely right, and she is absolutely wrong. Grady Memorial Hospital,
our local public hospital, faces a $26.4 million deficit for this calendar year.
To cut costs, the administration recommended that the hospital board begin to
charge even the poorest of the poor five dollars for each clinic visit and a tendollar
copayment for each prescription and medical supply. This disastrous policy
attempted to solve the budget problems on the backs of the poor and
amounted to a death sentence for many Grady patients, especially the poorest,
who are elderly and/or who have chronic illnesses that require several medications
to sustain life and health.
These problems at Grady are a local problem with local causes; they are also
the local symptoms of a national crisis with national causes. Local governments
are both responsible for and victims of the problem. The national health care
crisis is being played out on a local level, and I have begun to wonder if health
care will be the issue on which we come together nationally to seek significant
change.
Over the past twenty years, the United States has undergone sweeping
change that increasingly has consolidated resources in fewer hands. The wealthiest
1 percent of our people have amassed fortunes in the millions and billions.
A significant number of people near the top have accumulated more money and
possessions than anybody could need in one lifetime; the middle class is more
vulnerable; the working class is close to falling over the edge; and the poor have
sunk deeper into the misery of substandard housing, homelessness, prison, and
limited access to good schools, proper nutrition, and health care.
Since the early 1980s, a persistent legislative and judicial program has given
every advantage to wealthy individuals, corporations, and institutions, putting
the working class and poor at a greater disadvantage. Public institutions and
services have been opened to the forces of privatization, increasing profits for the
already wealthy and destabilizing the work environment. All services and institutions
are becoming fair game for the market, and all space is becoming commercial
space. The values and language of the market have come to dominate
our common life to the extent that ethical discussion, or religious or moral discourse,
has begun to seem quaint, if not irrelevant. The bottom line is every-