This week's Third Place features Dr. Jonathan Roberts, co-author (with Dr. Thomas Durant) of The History of Charity Hospitals of Louisiana. Dr. Roberts is former director of the Louisiana state Charity Hospital system, HR manager at the Our Lady of the Lake hospital, CEO of the Medical Center of New Orleans and the Earl K. Long Charity Hospital in Baton Rouge, and Chief Academic Officer of the LSU Hospitals System. We talk about the history of Louisiana's unique state-wide and state-supported Charity Hospitals system, the vision of populist governor Huey Long. In the present day, Dr. Roberts explains the fiscally wasteful and dangerous consequences of the closure of Earl K. Long in Baton Rouge, the shuttering of Big Charity in New Orleans, and the closing of Baton Rouge General's ER in Mid-City. We focus on Louisiana state government's shifting the role of public hospitals from treating the uninsured to graduate medical education and the defunding of the Charity system.
