Hospitals Serving The Poor Struggled During COVID. Wealthy Hospitals Made Millions

Anyone who has watched soap operas in the last 50 years knows Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center as General Hospital. For decades, its original building graced the soap opera's opening credits.

Inside, though, there's no love story between Luke and Laura.

LAC-USC is what's known as a safety-net hospital — one of the largest in the country. And that makes the reality inside a daily financial struggle to care for every patient who walks through its doors. Patients other hospitals often try to avoid.

One recent week brought a man who said he came to the hospital to "sleep and eat," a man with dementia that staff couldn't identify, and a woman found on the street covered in feces after walking out of a skilled nursing facility. Patients who can only pay a little. Patients who can't pay at all. Patients with difficult problems.

Few of these patients, if any, have private insurance. And because the hospital for many of them to go when their health improves, doctors say some patients have stayed as long as three years.