Stop The Discharges At Laguna Honda Hospital! Discharges = Deaths

Despite unanimous opposition from the community and labor to the continued discharge of patients at San Francisco City’s Laguna Honda Hospital, Mayor London Breed and her hand-picked San Francisco Department of Public Health commissioners have decided that discharges will start again on February 3, 2023. It was only announced yesterday that they will be postponed until May 19th, when the discharges will start again. This further terrorizes the patients and residents.

These discharges have already killed 12 patients of the Hospital. Further discharges will lead directly to more deaths, and they have been warned at DPH hearings. Nursing home workers are already overloaded with patients and not prepared for many of the fragile residents and patients at Laguna Honda.

The SF Board of Supervisors has also refused to stop the discharges, and Supervisor Mandelman wants to shut down the debate by ending hybrid meetings where disabled, community, and labor members can participate remotely.

We demand that Newsom and the State Department of Public Health along with US Secretary of Health & Human Services Xavier Becerra put a halt to these discharges. The Chair of Board Dan Bernal is the Chief of Staff for Nancy Pelosi and yet they are allowing the discharges to start again. Behind this is the drive to privatize the hospital and sell of the land for luxury condos which developers are already planning for. This also a boon for the private nursing home industry which Gavin Newsom and his state agencies refusing  to properly regulate and provide oversight of these nursing homes.

We need to stop the privatization of public health system and demand that nursing homes be run properly by the public without billionaires cutting costs for more profits. The outsourcing to consultants and the expenditures of over 56 million dollars as well has not been transparent, and instead of bringing in professionals, they are wasting more money by not hiring professionals as city employees to do the job.

Bring your community members and union brothers and sisters and bring your signs & banners to this speak-out.