Saving Lives And Saving Money [CaliforniaHealthLine.org]
Don Meade doesn’t like hospitals, but he uses them. In just one year, he made 62 trips to the emergency room. He rattles off the names of local hospitals in Orange and Los Angeles counties like they’re a handful of pills. “St. Joseph’s in Orange, [Saddleback Memorial in] Laguna Hills,” he says. “The best one for me around here is PIH in Whittier.” At 52, Meade has chronic heart disease and other serious ailments, and he is recovering from a longtime addiction to crack cocaine. Today, he...