Los Angeles law may keep homeless in hospitals

Los Angeles hospitals have been shamed in recent years by reports some of them dumped homeless patients onto downtown's skid row before they were well enough to care for themselves, but a new city ordinance makes it a misdemeanor for health facilities to transport a patient to a place other than his or her residence without written consent. Hospital administrators fear that a conviction could trigger an automatic exclusion from government health programs, and they also worry about the cost of keeping patients who are healthy enough to be discharged but have no place to go.