‘You’re Playing the Race Card!’ Fox’s Geraldo and Bolling Battle over Dallas Hospital’s Ebola Treatment

Fox’s Geraldo Rivera thinks racial and socioeconomic factors may have contributed to the Dallas hospital’s initial decision to not further monitor the now-deceased Ebola patient. He repeated that point several times Thursday, ultimately taking it to The O’Reilly Factor to debate it with guest-host Eric Bolling.

“It was either gross malpractice or it was the doctor seeing yet another poor black man without insurance in the emergency room, yet again, these urban hospitals overrun with patients without insurance,” Rivera explained. “I think there’s almost zero chance that his race or social class played no role.”

Bolling was unhappy: “How could you bring race? You know what, Geraldo, I would expect Al Sharpton to bring race into this, I would expect Jesse Jackson to bring race into this, I would not expect Geraldo Rivera to bring race into this.”

After Rivera suggested doctors often make these decisions during late-night shifts in urban hospitals, Bolling declared: “You are playing a card; you’re playing the race card, but

I think you’re playing the wrong card. You should be playing the medical insurance card. He didn’t have his medical insurance, and maybe there was an issue there.”

Rivera took a few steps back and said he wasn’t making it a “race issue” so much as a “social class issue,” noting a “systemic problem” in hospitals that deal with lots of uninsured minorities.

Watch the full segment below, via Fox:

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