Staying Alive in NOLA

Primary care clinics, in the form of six double-wide trailers, arrived in New Orleans nine months ago to provide non-emergency care to the poor and uninsured. So far, the free care has reached no one:

"It looks like the city's own bureaucratic roadblocks have prevented health care from being delivered," Ben Mount, a member of the LSU Board of Supervisors, said Thursday…

It wasn't until last week that the New Orleans City Council agreed to temporarily waive the city's zoning code to allow the trailers to be located at six schools around the city—three on the east bank and three in Algiers—for two years.

It'd be easy to blame government-provided health care, but the council is too inept to allow government-provided health care to begin malfunctioning. So how close are the clinics to go time?

In between fell more than 100 meetings and dozens of e-mails about the issue involving LSU executives and officials at the city, state and federal levels. And the journey is not over. The zoning waivers still need approval from Mayor Ray Nagin, which cannot occur until next week at the earliest, as well as permits from the city that could take up to six months to acquire.

Whole thing here.