The Times columnist (this was more than a year ago) was trying to prove how much East Los Angeles needed the largest possible new County USC Medical Center. So he went down to a clinic adjoining the old hospital and spoke to some people standing in line to get inside. They said: If only the county would expand the medical center — a.k.a. General Hospital — to its maximum 750 beds, there wouldn’t be a long wait.The columnist, needless to say, agreed. He thus got it all wrong, just as many others have, before and since. For a century, big hospitals symbolized urban public health care, just the way battleships symbolized national strength. They were monuments: One protected our health and the other guarded our shores. It often seems that simple even now, when most public health care comes from clinics. This false assumption has had a dramatic effect on our health services.
Source: Waving the Waiver | L.A. Weekly