The nation’s capital city has never gotten over the closing of D.C. General, its main hospital for poor people. Its policy of trying to heal every person who stumbled through the door, from gunshot victims to AIDS patients, was highly Hippocratic but barely economic. In its final months, doctors went unpaid, hospital rooms turned filthy, patients languished — until then-mayor Anthony Williams pulled the plug in May 2001. But closing D.C. General “did not absolve the D.C. government from providing health care to that population,” says Washington Hospital Center’s Janis Orlowski, as I reported in a recent column. Orlowski, the hospital’s chief medical officer, is bearing some responsibility and might be part of the solution. As I write, the city’s politicians are at war over United Medical Center, the closest hospital to D.C.’s most needy residents east of the Anacostia River: pregnant moms, HIV patients, sick kids. Mayor Vince Gray and most of the D.C. Council want to sell it; David Catania, an at-large council member, wants to keep it in the city’s hands for two years, then reassess.

Let’s agree that the hospital at 1310 Southern Avenue has cost the city more than $100 million in subsidies, and it still doesn’t provide ideal care. But Gray and the council seem headed for a fire sale to local businessman George Chopivsky. This is questionable at best and potentially disastrous.