TEODORA MARIN, 21, ARRIVED LAST week at the sprawling County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles in no mood to ponder the fine points of municipal finance. Earlier in the day, she had discovered several soft lumps on the neck of her son Jesus. Jesus had been born at County-USC, premature and sickly; the doctors had told Teodora, a recent Mexican immigrant, that she must bring him back if unusual symptoms developed. Back to County-USC, that is: without money or insurance, none of the area's private clinics will see her. As a nurse inspected her son's swollen lymph nodes and scheduled a...
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