Lessons from Katrina: U.S. Needs Change

Yesterday marked the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The storm destroyed not only the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, it also ripped the roof off President Bush's house of cards.

The natural disaster exposed the Bush administration's general incompetence, as people saw first-hand that the president was out of touch with America. Consequently, President Bush's approval ratings took a hard hit, sinking immediately after Katrina to the low 30% without a rebound.

Two huge problems remain unsolved after Katrina: health care and housing. If the GOP can't fix those problems for Katrina victims, how can Americans trust them to fix them for the rest of the country? And if the current state of affairs is any indication, the GOP has very litle chance of taking the White House in 2008.

Health care is almost nonexistent in New Orleans. Jenni Bergal, a former project manager at the Center for Public Integrity and author of City Adrift: New Orleans Before and After Katrina, explained that Charity Hospital, the city's largest hospital, which helped many of the poor and uninsured, never reopened after Katrina left it flooded and in disrepair. New Orleans' indigent patients are consequently shunted to the already overcrowded hospitals left standing. Doctors and other health care professional have left the area en masse and never returned.

Mental health care has also suffered. Depression plagues those who are struggling to cope with the loss of their homes and their loved ones. A new survey by the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group showed that suicide rates have doubled, as have signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. These distressed residents can't get the help they need because so many mental health workers have fled the city.

Federal funds have been patchwork and have not focused on rebuilding a health care system to handle uninsured patients.

Housing also is a huge problem in New Orleans. More than 184,000 people have applied for home-rebuilding funds from the Road Home program. Yet only 44,000 have received those funds, according to a story in today's Washington Post. Red tape has held up much of funding, with no government agency taking responsibility to improve matters. Many residents also cannot return because they lived in public housing projects that could be rehabilitated but that for some reason remain closed, said Bergal.

All of the top Democratic candidates have taken a long look at what happened in New Orleans and its ongoing troubles and have expressed collective outrage. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have outlined plans to revitalize the city.

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