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WSQT Guerilla Radio 87.9 in DC
On Monday, March 13, residents of Washington DC held a rally in front of City Hall to demand that the Council pass a bill to build the National Capitol Medical Center (NCMC) on the site of now-closed DC General Hospital
Closing that hospital was one of the Mayor's biggest mistakes ever, and even he seems to realize it! His city administrator Robert Bobb actually spoke at the rally along with many councilmembers.
This is a rare opportunity to undo one of the Mayor's bad decisions! Most councilmembers and the mayor are for the hospital, so why was the rally necessary?
Well, someone is keeping the bill bottled up in committee. The very same hospitals that demanded that DC General stay open in 2001(correctly guessing they'd get DC General's indigent patients) are now demanding that no new hospital be built. Why? Because the NCMC would be a world-class facility and now they fear losing business to it.
There is some interstign background on this issue. The original reason DC General was closed has been shown by maps to have been for an archery range for the city's 2012 Olympic Bid. Maps showed the archery range over the hospital, which was receiving enough money from Medicaid/Medicare to be operating at a profit, not a loss.
Well, in summer 2002, protestors convinced the Olympic Selection Committee that DC would have an Olympic security problem, and suceeded in driving away the games. Within 6 months, the NCMC was on the drawing board.
You see, gentrification is now pushing east, and now that the city has to worry about rich people as well as poor people being shot in SE, even the wealthy now agree a hospital east of the US Capitol is desperately needed. As a result, the fear of the wealthy is being made to serve the poor, and if industry lobby objection can be overcome, the hospital will be built!
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