Indigent

Re "Health Care Takes Deep Cuts," June 27: Other countries forced to make similar draconian cuts in their public health systems have seen outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases that otherwise could have been tracked, contained or cured. The cutbacks the Los Angeles County supervisors were forced to make have increased the probability of just such an outbreak here. I would strongly advise the well-to-do in our community not to think of this as a problem confined to the poor and indigent among us. It potentially affects everyone.

More than 100 patients and their supporters rallied outside an Eastside nonprofit health clinic Friday to protest its abrupt closing and that of another clinic in Bell. Both were operated by the Community Health Foundation of East Los Angeles. The sudden closures leave a gaping hole in medical care for thousands of the area's low-income and indigent patients, many of them Spanish speakers who relied on the clinics for inexpensive medical care.

After four years and a $2.6-million face lift, an obsolete motel in the heart of Thousand Oaks has reopened as a low-income apartment complex for more than 50 developmentally disabled, mentally ill and previously homeless adults. Esseff Village, as the former Village Inn Motel is now known, is the seventh affordable housing project in Ventura County by developer Many Mansions, a nonprofit housing organization based in Thousand Oaks.

One of Orange County's most controversial defense attorneys was arrested Tuesday along with his wife on suspicion of laundering $175,000 in drug profits. The arrests followed an FBI sting operation. William Stewart of Newport Beach appeared in federal court Tuesday afternoon, shackled to a waist chain alongside his wife, Amalia, and a business colleague also arrested in connection with the alleged laundering.

As election day draws near, just three private hospitals qualify for $260 million in tobacco funds, while others are busily juggling their numbers to cash in on the financial windfall if Measure O passes in November. The biggest hospital not qualified for any money this year is St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard. But backers of Measure O said Friday that is temporary. "I will guarantee you a year of my salary that if Measure O passes, St.

When 8-year-old Evelyn Salcedo needed a tonsillectomy, her mother took her to Michoacan for the operation. The reason? Ana Salcedo had been charged $400 earlier for tests at a hospital in the San Fernando Valley. Without insurance, government assistance or private means, Salcedo could only afford a doctor in Mexico. It was the same for Rosaura Haro. When she and her daughter needed medical tests, she went south.

The emergency health care needs of poor, uninsured Orange County residents are not being met by the county's underfunded Medical Services for Indigents program, according to a grand jury report released Friday. "If one is ill and indigent in Orange County, there are ways to obtain medical care; but frequently the efforts needed to find the care, complete the forms and qualify turn away all but the most determined," the report stated.

The confrontation between the public and private health care sectors intensified Wednesday as Los Angeles County supervisors refused to reject a cap on the number of indigent patients county hospitals will accept next year, while calling for an investigation into allegations that the state's largest private hospital chain has cut its spending on charity care.

A 38-year-old community college student who works part-time spent a week in Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center recently recovering from a heart attack. He got there by calling 911 after chest pains raged out of control. His substantial bills were paid by a county program called Medical Services for Indigents, or MSI. The student had plenty of warning; he is a diabetic with a history of hypertension and high cholesterol.