ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Saints destroy the Lions

 

Associated Press

Brees led an unstoppable offense by throwing for 466 yards
and three touchdowns, and New Orleans dominated the second half for a 45-28 NFC
wild-card victory over the Detroit Lions on Saturday night.

New Orleans broke the postseason mark for total yards with
626, beating the record set 49 years ago.

“We were pulling out all the stops,” Brees said.
“We play aggressive. We’re not going to apologize for that. That gives
guys in the huddle a lot of confidence. We’re not going to pull the reins back.
It’s pedal to the medal.”

Brees hit on 33 of 43 passes while throwing for the most
yards in a regulation playoff game. He highlighted his night with three
completions of at least 40 yards.

“We just focus on winning. We’re not focused on yards
and records,” Saints coach Sean Payton said. “I’m serious when I say
that.”

As usual, the quarterback had plenty of help from an offense
that set an NFL record for yards from scrimmage this season (7,474), outgaining
Detroit on the ground 167 yards to 32. The Saints (14-3) will travel to San
Francisco (13-3) for next Saturday’s second-round game.

Marching Into San Francisco

The Saints move on to face the 49ers in the divisional
round. For the Saints to advance to their third NFC championship game in six
seasons, they’ll have to do something they’ve never done before — win a road
playoff game.

 

Season Opp.      Result

2010       at Seahawks       Lost

2006       at Bears                Lost

2000       at Vikings             Lost

1990       at Bears                Lost  — ESPN Stats & Information

Matthew Stafford threw for 380 yards and three TDs for the
Lions (10-7), who simply could not keep pace in their first playoff appearance
since the 1999 season. They have lost seven straight postseason games.

“It’s a learning experience for the whole team. We’ll
get better. We’ll be back,” Lions coach Jim Schwartz said. “Obviously
it hurts right now.”

All-Pro receiver Calvin Johnson had 12 receptions for 211
yards and two touchdowns in his playoff debut for Detroit, but that was not
nearly enough as the Saints’ defense responded in the fourth quarter with two
interceptions by Jabari Greer.

“We did make the playoffs this year and that’s a great
accomplishment,” Johnson said. “We have some things to work on and we
will. We know what we have to do to make the next step.”

The teams combined for 1,083 yards, tying an NFL playoff
record set by Buffalo and Miami on Dec. 30, 1995. The Superdome will likely
host a much different contest on Monday night, when defensive stalwarts LSU and
Alabama meet for the BCS national title. Fans in the dome cheered wildly for
the LSU band as it played before the game and at halftime, then enjoyed a
second half that culminated in what they hope will be the first of two Big Easy
celebrations in three nights.

Pierre Thomas finished with 66 yards and one touchdown
rushing, while Darren Sproles added 51 yards, two scores and several other
clutch plays.

Marques Colston overcame an early fumble with seven catches
for 120 yards, including a 40-yarder to set up Jimmy Graham’s short TD grab.

Robert Meachem had four catches for 111 yards, including a
56-yard score. Devery Henderson added a 41-yard touchdown reception.

Mega Effort From Megatron

Calvin Johnson became the third wide receiver since the
merger to tally at least 200 receiving yards and two TDs in a playoff game.

 

Season WR         Tds-TD

’11 Wild Card      Calvin
Johnson  211-2

’05 Divisional      Steve
Smith        218-2

’04 Wild Card      Reggie
Wayne   221-2  — ESPN Stats & Information

New Orleans showed guts and got a little good fortune on a
decisive 14-play, 80-yard scoring drive in the fourth quarter. The Saints ran
Sproles around the left end on fourth-and-2 at the Lions 40 and gained 3 yards.
Soon after, Brees’ pass as he was clobbered by Nick Fairley went right through
the hands of defensive back Aaron Berry.

Berry would regret that drop two plays later as Sproles
bolted 17 yards to make it 31-21.

Stafford tried to get some of that back quickly, throwing
deep for Titus Young, but Greer ran under it and picked it off. Four plays
later, Brees spotted Meachem behind blown coverage for his long score to make
it 38-21.

The Lions became only the second visiting team all year to
lead at halftime in the Superdome, where the Saints were unbeaten during the
regular season.

“So going into halftime at a deficit, we just realized,
‘Listen, just bear down, one play at a time, one drive at a time,’ ” Brees
said, “and I think we scored on every drive in the second half. I guess
that’s what you hope for.”

New Orleans has won nine in a row overall.

The Saints opened the second half by driving 78 yards to
take their first lead on Brees’ 31-yard pass to Henderson. New Orleans then
widened its lead to 24-14 with a 92-yard drive that included what may have been
a favorable spot on Colston’s third-down grab at the Saints 18. Later, Brees
converted a risky dive over the pile on fourth-and-1 at the New Orleans 38 to
sustain the drive before finding Colston for a 40-yard gain to the Detroit 3.
Brees hit Graham for a score on the next play.

“It was fourth and inches and we felt like we had a
rhythm going,” Brees said. “Obviously it was a gutsy call but we’ve
been known to make those types of calls.”

 

The Lions fought back with a quick 80-yard scoring drive
highlighted by Stafford’s 42-yard completion to Johnson at the Saints 2,
setting up Stafford’s dive for the pylon on a bootleg that made it 24-21 late
in the third quarter.

Detroit could not have planned a much better start to its
first playoff game since the ’99 season.

Stafford completed five of his first six throws for 70
yards, starting with a 22-yard completion to Johnson on the second play from
scrimmage. A 10-yard strike to reserve tight end Will Heller gave the Lions a
7-0 lead.

New Orleans responded by quickly driving into Lions
territory, but Colston was stripped by Stephen Tulloch on the 18-yard line and
Justin Durant recovered. It was a rare lost fumble for the Saints, who had an
NFL low and franchise record low five during the regular season.

New Orleans found the end zone on its next drive to tie it
at 7, but Stafford led the Lions right back downfield, hitting Johnson in the
back of the end zone for a 13-yard score.

The Saints then fumbled a second time in Detroit territory
when Brees was stripped just before throwing by defensive end Willie Young and
the ball squirted to Durant for his second recovery. Durant wanted to return
it, but the play was inexplicably blown dead. What might have been a touchdown
return instead became a stalled drive.

The Saints thought they had tied it when Colston’s catch in
the back of the end zone was ruled a touchdown, but it was overturned on replay
and New Orleans wound up settling for John Kasay’s 24-yard field goal and a
14-10 halftime deficit.

Bernie Kosar still holds the record for yards passing in a
playoff game, though his game in 1986 went to overtime when he reached 489 for
Cleveland against the New York Jets. … Detroit’s leading rusher was Kevin
Smith with only 21 yards. … The Lions rushed the ball only 10 times and their
longest gain was 9 yards. … The Saints surpassed 500 total offensive yards in
five regular season games, with the playoff game being the sixth. … Brees
finished the regular season with seven straight 300-yard or more passing games
and easily continued the streak against the Lions.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/recap?gameId=320107018

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Brock Lesnar Retires After Beat down

Brock Gets A Beat Down

LAS VEGAS — Brock Lesnar took one last kick to his stomach
and crumpled at the side of the cage, unable to fight back when Alistair
Overeem pounced. Lesnar had been finished by a 6-foot-5 Dutch kick boxer in the
first round at UFC 141. A few minutes later, the UFC’s former heavyweight
champion finished his own meteoric mixed martial arts career.

 

Lesnar retired from the UFC after Overeem stopped him with
one vicious kick to the body at 2:26 of the first round in their heavyweight
bout Friday night, leaving the UFC heading into 2012 without its biggest
pay-per-view star.

 

“This is the last time you’ll see me in the octagon,” Lesnar
said.

Largely thanks to his fame from a career in pro wrestling,
the hulking Lesnar (5-3) played a significant role in expanding the UFC’s
profile and fan base over the past four years. He beat Randy Couture in 2008 to
win the heavyweight title, defending it twice before losing the belt to Cain
Velasquez last year.

 

But Lesnar has fought just three times in the past 2½ years
while dealing with bouts of a lower-intestinal ailment that nearly killed him.
The accumulation of pain and rehabilitation finally undid Lesnar, whose famed
strength and stubbornness couldn’t overcome diverticulitis. “I’ve had a really
difficult couple of years with my disease, and I’m going to officially say
tonight is the last time,” Lesnar said.

 

Lesnar’s return from a 14-month injury absence was a short,
one-sided beating. After taking damage from two knee blows early on, he
couldn’t recover from a kick to the liver from Overeem (36-11), who made a
stellar UFC debut despite getting cut near his right eye by a punch from
Lesnar.

 

The 34-year-old Lesnar’s announcement stunned fans who
already realized he faced a difficult matchup in the UFC’s traditional
end-of-the-year event in its hometown. The matchup was a classic MMA clash of
styles, with Lesnar’s brute wrestling contrasting sharply with Overeem’s
vicious striking. “I had no idea he would do that, (but) am I surprised? No,”
UFC President Dana White said. “Brock Lesnar has made a lot of money in his
career and has achieved a lot of things. … He brought a lot of excitement to
the heavyweight division. What he accomplished in a short amount of time is
amazing, but I get it. It doesn’t shock me.”

 

Overeem is three years younger but much more experienced
than Lesnar, hurting the former champion at least twice earlier in the round
while Lesnar failed in his attempt at a one-legged takedown.

 

“I promised my wife and my kids if I won this fight, I would
get a title shot, and that would be my last fight,” Lesnar said. “But if I lost
tonight … you’ve been great.”

 

Overeem will get the next shot at UFC heavyweight champion
Junior Dos Santos, who watched from a seat near the octagon.

 

Overeem is a champion kick boxer who has fought in multiple
promotions over the past decade, winning titles in Dream and Strikeforce with
nearly unbeatable striking and size. He joined the UFC in September, finally
presenting his formidable skills and intimidating physique to the sport’s
largest audience. “My experience in UFC was, it’s huge,” Overeem said. “I think
it’s like 100 times bigger than Strikeforce. K-1 (kick boxing) is big, but this
is a lot bigger. I was a little bit blown away, still am. I loved every second
of it.”

 

White might have given an immediate title shot to Overeem if
the timing had been better, but Dos Santos only claimed Velasquez’s belt in
early November. Overeem welcomed a debut against Lesnar, even guaranteeing a
knockout in the first two rounds. “First or second round, I promised,” Overeem
said.

 

Lesnar hadn’t fought since losing his heavyweight belt to
Velasquez in October 2010, cancelling a bout against Dos Santos last June in
Vancouver after another flare-up of diverticulitis. The former NCAA wrestling
champion and fake WWE wrestler kept his unparalleled popularity during his
recovery, and Lesnar used the time off to modify both his diet and his standup
game, attempting to improve his biggest weakness. As it turned out, Lesnar
couldn’t improve enough to contend with the supremely skilled Overeem, who
embraced Lesnar afterward.

 

The undercard at the MGM Grand Garden featured two upsets:
Lightweight Nate Diaz won a bloody unanimous decision over Donald “Cowboy”
Cerrone with superior boxing, and Johny Hendricks stopped welterweight star Jon
Fitch with one punch just 12 seconds into their bout.

 

In the co-main event, Diaz (15-7) backed up his tough talk
and rude behavior in a fight that had the sellout crowd on its feet as he
battered Cerrone, nearly a 3-to-1 favorite in the MGM Grand sportsbook, for
most of the three-round standup fight.

 

Diaz, the brother of bad-boy welterweight Nick Diaz, picked
apart Cerrone’s defense for most of the fight, leaving Cerrone bloody after his
first loss in seven fights since September 2010.

 

Cerrone (17-4) knocked down Diaz at least a half-dozen times
with kicks and leg-whips, but Cerrone refused to fight Diaz on the ground,
repeatedly allowing Diaz to get up.

 

The unusual strategy showed respect for Diaz’s ground
skills, but also minimized the importance of those knockdown shots in the eyes
of the judges, who scored the bout 30-27 twice and 29-28 once, all for Diaz.

 

Hendricks (12-1) ascended to elite status with one sneaky
left hook that caught Fitch (27-4-1) right on the button, flattening the
favored San Jose fighter, whose return from a 10-month absence was stunningly
brief. Hendricks, a two-time NCAA champion wrestler at Oklahoma State,
completely stunned Fitch, who had lost just one fight since December 2002.

 

Early in the pay-per-view portion of the card, Swedish light
heavyweight Alexander Gustafsson (13-1) stopped veteran Vladimir Matyushenko
with a perfect left hand midway through the first round.

 

Unbeaten featherweight Jim Hettes got new fans’ attention
with a comprehensive thrashing of veteran Nam Phan, repeatedly threatening to
finish the fight with strikes and ground work.

http://clikhear.palmbeachpost.com/2011/all-sports/boxing-i-mma/ufc-141-lesnar-loses-retires-nate-diaz-wins-bloody-unanimous-decision/

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Black man Kills White Grocery Store Owner and the Community comes together

He Should Get the Death Penalty

 

Black man Kills White Grocery Store Owner and the Community
comes together

By: BILL DIPAOLO

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

A 19-year-old Belle Glade man, a first year student at Palm
Beach State College with no arrest record, could receive the death penalty
after his arrest Saturday for the murder of Belle Glade grocery store owner
Jimmy McMillan.

Corey Graham Jr. was charged with first-degree murder with a
firearm, aggravated assault with a firearm and armed robbery with a firearm.

Many calls from people in the community led to the arrest,
said Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, who had offered a $25,000 reward for information
leading to capture and conviction of the killer.

“The cooperation from the community was
essential,” Bradshaw at an 11 p.m. press conference announcing the arrest.

State Attorney Michael McAuliffe would not comment on
whether he would seek the death penalty.

Dressed in tuxedoes with their collars open, the two men
announced the arrest in front of the Palm Beach County Jail. They had been at
the Palm Beach Police Foundation’s ball at Mar-a-Lago, where Donald Trump was a
guest to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the Palm Beach police
department.

The investigation continues. Bradshaw said the murder weapon
has not been found.

The arrest would not have been made so quickly without the
cooperation from Belle Glade residents, said McAuliffe.

“This could be a turning point for us in winning
community support,” he said.

Pleas of “stop the violence” came from local
pastors and residents of the community following the Monday shooting of
McMillan, 49, at his popular Alabama Georgia Grocery Store, located in the 700
block of Southwest Martin Luther King Boulevard in Belle Glade.

Police said a man wearing a mask entered the store at about
6:30 a.m. and attempted a robbery. McMillan was found lying on the floor with a
gunshot wound. He was flown to Delray Medical Center, where he died. The
shooter escaped but was recorded on surveillance cameras, according to the
sheriff’s office.

McMillan, a champion bass fisherman and father of three, was
Palm Beach County’s first homicide victim in 2012. Residents said McMillan
often gave credit to residents without cash, cooked meals for unemployed and
hired locals.

The store was started in the 1940s by the grandfather of
McMillan’s mother, Linda. Linda McMillan went to work there when she was 13.
Eventually, she and her husband bought it.

The day after his death, many friends of the McMillan family
and store customers filled out a poster that covered the shuttered metal doors
of the store.

“We will miss you,” wrote Sarah Pittman.
“Your jokes, your laugh and sneaking up behind people scaring the heck out
of them. You were a good boss when I worked here. Rest in Peace, Jimmy.”

Wrote Dee-Dee: “R.I.P. Jimmy. Your smile and kindness
will be truly missed.”

McMillan was white and his family had run their store for
decades on Martin Luther King Boulevard in the predominantly black
neighborhood.

It was his black customers and friends from that
neighborhood who trooped up to the door hour after hour, some to sign, others
just to look and grieve.

“We need the community to help us,” said Connie
Deaton, McMillan’s sister, speaking outside the home of their parents.
“We’re begging anyone with information to contact the sheriff’s
department. We need help to find who did this.”

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/crime/belle-glade-man-19belle-glade-man-19-charged-with-first-degree-2087986.html

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Why did Tiger's ex-wife Destroy Home

The Associated Press

Friday, January 6, 2012 12:22 PM EST

NORTH PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The oceanfront mansion Tiger
Woods’ ex-wife purchased for $12.3 million has been demolished and she is
planning to build a new home.

 

The Palm Beach Post ( bit.ly/Avza2Z) reports that Elin
Nordegren (EE’-lihn NOHRD’-grihn) plans to build on the North Palm Beach lot
she bought last year. The lot is about 140 miles southeast of Woods’ home in
Orlando.

 

The newspaper reports the mansion that was demolished was a
two-story, 17,000-square-foot-home built in 1932. It had a swimming pool and an
elevator.

 

Realtor John True of Oceanfront Realty says the lot is in
the Seminole Landing development, among the most exclusive in Palm Beach
County.

 

Nordegren divorced Woods in 2010 after learning he had a
string of affairs during their five-year marriage. They share custody of the
couple’s two children.

 

 

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The hypocrisy of Progressives who don’t want cross honoring Marines

We should love the Cross

By: Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

January 3, 2012

Reporting from San Diego— In the early days of the U.S.
battle with the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the four Marines from Camp Pendleton
were among those troops on the front lines in Anbar province.

The two enlisted Marines would not survive those violent
days in the spring of 2004: one was killed by “friendly fire” when a
mortar round went awry and one was mortally wounded while hurling a grenade to
repel an enemy assault, bravery for which he was posthumously awarded the
Silver Star.

The two officers survived, only later to be killed in other
battles in other parts of the country: one by gunfire while leading a raid in
Baghdad to kill or capture a “high-value” target in 2007 and one by
stepping on a buried bomb while scouting an attack position near the Syrian
border in 2005.

On Veterans Day, a retired Navy chaplain — who served with
Zurheide, Austin, Zembiec and Mendoza with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine
Regiment — led a small group of Marines and family members up a steep, rugged
hill at Camp Pendleton to plant a 13-foot tall cross in their memory. No one
informed the chain of command or asked for permission.

Zurheide, Zembiec and Mendoza had been among those Marines
who planted a cross in the same spot in 2003 before the battalion deployed to
Iraq.

In the years after the deaths, Marine “grunts” adopted
the hill as a place to leave messages in remembrance of those killed in action,
including coins, medals, dog tags, and bits of sand and dirt brought back from
distant battlefields.

The cross was destroyed by a brush fire in 2007. A
replacement was raised in 2008, without news coverage. When a second cross was
erected on Veterans Day, a story in The Times told of the cross and its meaning
to Marines.

Within days, two groups petitioned the Marine Corps to take down
the crosses as a violation of the constitutional separation of church and
state. Two other groups took the opposite stance.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine), who served with the battalion
in Fallouja, urged the Marines to leave the cross alone. The American Civil
Liberties Union, although not directly involved in the dispute, said it hopes
the Marines will “follow the law.”

“The legal test is whether from the perspective of a
reasonable observer this would be perceived as government endorsement of religion,”
said Erwin Chemerinsky, founding dean of the law school at UC Irvine and a
constitutional scholar.

The cross, Chemerinsky noted, is an inherently Christian
symbol. But an argument could be made that because the cross is not visible to
the public and that the only people who see it are Marines, it does not serve a
religious purpose but rather a reminder to Marines of those who have fallen in
combat, he said.

“My own sense is that a cross by itself on a military
base violates” the Constitution, Chemerinsky said. “But whether a
court will see it that way is uncertain.”

The colonel in charge of Camp Pendleton has sent an
undisclosed recommendation about the cross to Marine Corps headquarters, where
the issue is being studied by lawyers and generals. A decision is expected
within weeks.

Photos: Marines’ cross honors fallen comrades

So who were these four Marines and why, years after their
deaths, do Marines feel it important that they be remembered?

Austin, 21, had joined the Marine Corps after graduating
from high school in rural Texas. He loved parties and football but quit the
team in solidarity when his cousin had a run-in with the coach.

Two days before he was killed in a firefight, Austin told
The Times: “There’s no place I’d rather be than here with my Marines. I’ll
always remember this time.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-church-state-20120103,0,877217.story

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Your Tax Dollars Pay for Illegal’s and Bums

Money Not Well Spent

By SAM ROBERTS

Hundreds of patients have been languishing for months or even years in New York City hospitals, despite being well enough to be sent home or to nursing centers for less-expensive care, because they are illegal immigrants or lack sufficient insurance or appropriate housing.

Yu Kang Fu was moved to a care center in Brooklyn last spring after spending over four years at New York Downtown Hospital.

As a result, hospitals are absorbing the bill for millions of dollars in unreimbursed expenses annually while the patients, trapped in bureaucratic limbo, are sometimes deprived of services that could be provided elsewhere at a small fraction of the cost.

“Many of those individuals no longer need that care, but because they have no resources and many have no family here, we, unfortunately, are caring for them in a much more expensive setting than necessary based on their clinical need,” said LaRay Brown, a senior vice president for the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation. Under state law, public hospitals are not allowed to discharge patients to shelters or to the street.

Medicaid often pays for emergency care for illegal immigrants, but not for continuing care, and many hospitals in places with large concentrations of illegal immigrants, like Texas, California and Florida, face the quandary of where to send patients well enough to leave. Officials in New York City say they have many such patients who are draining money from the health system as the cost of keeping people in acute-care hospitals continues to escalate.

But even if Medicaid pays for some care, taxpayer dollars are ultimately being consumed by patients who could be cared for in nursing homes or other health facilities, and even at home if supportive services were available. Care for a patient languishing in a hospital can cost more than $100,000 a year, while care in a nursing home can cost $20,000 or less.

Patients fit to be discharged from hospitals but having no place to go typically remain more than five years, Ms. Brown said. She estimated that there were about 300 patients in such a predicament throughout the city, most in public hospitals or higher-priced skilled public nursing homes, though a smattering were in private hospitals.

One patient, a former hospital technician from Queens, has lived at the city’s Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital and Nursing Facility on Roosevelt Island for 13 years because the hospital has no place to send him, Ms. Brown said. The patient, who is in his mid-60s, has been there since an arterial disease cost him part of one leg below the knee and left him in a wheelchair. The city’s public health system declined to provide the names of any long-term patients or make them available for interviews, citing confidentiality laws.

Five years ago, Yu Kang Fu, 58, who lived in Flushing, Queens, and was a cook at a Chinese restaurant in New Jersey, was dropped off by his boss at New York Downtown Hospital, a private institution in Manhattan, complaining of a severe headache. Mr. Yu was admitted to the intensive-care unit with a stroke.

Within days, he was well enough for hospital personnel to begin planning for his release, but as an illegal immigrant (he had overstayed a work visa a decade ago), he was ineligible for health benefits. And no nursing home or rehabilitation center would take him. Neither would his son in China nor the Chinese government, although the hospital volunteered to fly him there at its expense.

Mr. Yu’s protracted hospital stay was first chronicled in an article in The New York Times in 2008 about the treatment of uninsured immigrants.

Mr. Yu remained in the hospital for over four years until he was transferred last spring to the Atlantis Rehabilitation and Residential Health Care Facility, a private center in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, after the federal government certified him as a “permanent resident under color of law,” essentially acknowledging that he could not be returned to China and qualifying him for medical benefits.

“This gentleman cost us millions of dollars,” said Jeffrey Menkes, the president of New York Downtown. “We try to provide physical, occupational therapy, but this is an acute-care hospital. This patient shouldn’t be here.”

Mr. Yu said that the hospital had treated him well, but that he had made enormous progress in regaining his ability to walk through his rehabilitation regimen at Atlantis. He hopes to return to China when he is well enough to be discharged.

“Here, I am very happy,” he said. “This is very nice — No. 1.”

New York Downtown serves a largely immigrant population, and many patients have no insurance or proof that they are in the United States legally, which is necessary for discharge purposes and eventual reimbursements, said Chui Man Lai, assistant vice president of patient services at the hospital.

These patients often arrive in the emergency room acutely ill and unaccompanied, and we have to treat them until they can be discharged safely,” Ms. Lai said. “The hospital is required, by law and its mission, to care for these patients.”

 

Health professionals refer to them as “permanent patients,” trussed in red tape and essentially living in hospitals already operating on thin margins. In some cases, health care professionals say, grown children leave ailing parents at the hospitals and go on vacation. Officials call that practice a “pop drop.”

Though the problem is particularly severe in the municipal hospital system, longtime patients place a financial burden wherever they end up.

New York Downtown spends about $2 million annually for such patients out of an operating budget of about $200 million. An acute-care patient can cost the hospital more than $1,500 a day.

Hospitals are reluctant to complain publicly about such patients for fear of being perceived as callously seeking to dump nonpaying patients. Elected officials are generally loath to be seen as encouraging illegal immigrants by changing reimbursement formulas. The issue was never addressed during the debate over national health care legislation.

Longtime patients, meanwhile, risk getting sicker because they are exposed to diseases that fester in hospitals.

“At times there is a fine line regarding who meets the criteria to be admitted to a hospital, but if there’s no way to immediately contact a family member and the patient needs nonmedical help or is homeless, you’re obligated to provide shelter,” said Dr. Warren B. Licht, who recently retired as New York Downtown’s chief medical officer after seven years to return to full-time clinical practice in the wellness and prevention center that he founded there. “You can’t kick a patient out of the hospital.”

New York Downtown, Dr. Licht said, has offered to pay for nursing home care for patents who are uninsured and are illegal immigrants, but care facilities are reluctant to risk taking patients for fear that they would be saddled with unexpected and unreimbursed expenses.

“If the patient does not have or cannot obtain health insurance to pay for the next level of care, other non-acute-care health facilities won’t routinely accept a patient,” Dr. Licht said.

New York Downtown has four or five patients out of a total of 180 who have no place to go, he said, adding, “It cost us several million dollars a year in a hospital struggling to keep its head above water.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/nyregion/nowhere-to-go-patients-linger-in-hospitals-at-a-high-cost.html?_r=1