She's OK, but Someone Lacks a Spine!

From the Houston Chronicle is a story about a hospital whose administration has been single-handedly cowed by a perfectly healthy octogenarian squatter!

"The thing is, I have no medical problem. I've been here more than a year, never had any medication, never had any treatment, never had a fever, have a perfect heart, blood pressure is like a teenager," [Sarah] Nome said from the hospital north of San Francisco.

"It isn't that I'm not ready to go. I just have nowhere to go," she added.

Exasperated hospital officials persuaded a judge to approve her eviction.

Maybe it's because they're in California that they need a judge to do something that a few orderlies could do: kick her out. And let me shelve my usual objections to it for a moment, but what of the welfare state? Surely, someone could have sent a form or two up the bureaucratic chain to have her transferred to a retirement home! Or, if she's so healthy and lucid, they could have put her to work. I'm flabbergasted! The bill is over $1 million so far and this has gone on for over a year since this patient received her discharge papers!

How the hell is such a standoff even possible? Is the legal situation in California so ridiculously bad that they're afraid of getting sued? Or is some hospital administrator waiting to harvest a spine?

-- CAV