Lord, when did we see you?

A hospital van dropped off a paraplegic man on Skid Row Thursday, allegedly leaving him crawling in the street with nothing more than a soiled gown and a broken colostomy bag, police said.

Several witnesses who saw the incident wrote down a phone number on the van and took down its license-plate number, which helped detectives connect the vehicle to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site.

Police said the incident was an outrageous case of "homeless dumping" and were questioning officials from the hospital.

"I can't think of anything colder than that," said Det. Russ Long. "There was no mission around, no services. It's the worst area of Skid Row."

Just read the rest. I can't add anything to what you're already thinking.

By the way, we may be moving closer to seeing this never happens again:

Wal-Mart – the nation’s largest retailer – has formed a coalition with labor unions and other larger corporations to call for quality affordable health coverage for all Americans by 2012. The coalition includes AT&T, Intel, Kelly Services, the Service Employees International Union and the Communications Workers of America. Three public policy groups are also backing the campaign, dubbed Better Health Care Together. Wal-Mart’s CEO Lee Scott said “Our current system hurts America’s competitiveness and leaves too many people uninsured.”

Although I certainly agree with Marilyn Clement:

Well, we welcome Wal-Mart and other large businesses and SEIU into this struggle for a national healthcare system. We think 2012 is way too long from now. We need healthcare now. People are desperate. Desperate. And 18,000 people are dying every year, simply for lack of healthcare coverage of any kind. And so, think about how many thousands of people will die between now and 2012. So we're putting forward a single-payer national healthcare system for everybody that would cost a lot less money. Think about every dollar you spend on healthcare: one-third of it now goes to the insurance companies for their profits, their administration, their advertising, their lobbyists, so if we take that one-third that we’re now spending on spurious -- we don't need them, we don’t need the insurance companies --and that would cover literally everybody who is uncovered in the United States for a lot less money and provide for the kind of system that most countries in the world, most of the advanced countries in the world, enjoy. So we're saying, join us. We've got the plan. We love having businesses come on, and major labor unions. Actually, SEIU's very large union in Chicago yesterday joined our campaign, Local 73. So we're looking forward to having everybody join us.

It is absurd that it has to happen this way. But at least, it's now more likely to happen.