Showing posts with label Obamacare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obamacare. Show all posts

Saturday, March 29, 2014

MRT Hospital Closings, Healthcare Cuts' Impact on Mental Health, Safety Net Care

From the Demand A Hospital listserv :

Dear All :

Some recent and past article links on the impact of hospital closings and other healthcare cuts to New York City's mental health, homeless, and safety net care :

  • The death of a mentally ill veteran in an overheated cell at Rikers Island exposed fundamental flaws in New York’s homeless and healthcare systems, members of the City Council said on Thursday. (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/nyregion/new-york-council-sees-flawed-mental-health-system.html)
  • The president of The Doe Fund is outraged that a homeless man was arrested, and later died in Rikers Island, instead of being taken to a shelter. (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/opinion/arresting-the-homeless.html)
  • Last year, the New York State Office of Mental Health unveiled a sweeping plan to consolidate and reduce the number of state-run psychiatric hospitals from 24 to 15. (http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Nine-state-psychiatric-centers-to-close-in-plan-4657459.php)
  • Holliswood Hospital, a 127-bed private psychiatric hospital in Queens, closed in 2013. (http://www.wnyc.org/story/312359-holliswood-hospital-queens-closing-its-doors/)
  • Many of the poor people who rely on safety-net hospitals will have to look for healthcare elsewhere after a government subsidy critical to hospitals’ survival is being sharply reduced under the new health law. (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/health/cuts-in-hospital-subsidies-threaten-safety-net-care.html)

After the closing of St. Vincent's, it looks like we lost more than just critical hospital facilities. Have New York City elected officials also lost their charitable concern for those with the least ?

Thanks for all that you do.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Tell Gov. Andrew Cuomo to stop closing our hospitals : 1 (518) 474-8390

You can also tweet your concerns to Gov. Cuomo at : @NYGovCuomo

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Contrasting "Narratives" on Medicaid, Hospital Budget Cuts Under Obamacare

#Gov1%, Hospital Budget Cuts, Medicaid Redesign Team, Stephen Berger, and GOP-Controlled States Take Toll on Life-Saving Emergency Care

Dr. Herbert Pardes, former CEO and President of New York Hospital-Columbia Presbyterian Hospital

Dr. Herbert Pardes, who used to lead New York-Presbyterian Hospital as president and CEO, earned $4.3 million in 2010, boosted by a $339,101 SERP payment. That came on top of a $6.8 million SERP payment that vested in 2008. (SERPs up! Hospital execs win big : Deferred plans boost chiefs' 'longevity pay' by millions of dollars * Crain's)

Dr. Pardes gave an interview on Channel 13 today, where he sounded pretty desperate to spin a win-win situation for patients under Obamacare. But there was a competing article published in The New York Times on the same day as his interview. The article showed that cuts to hospital budgets, caps on Medicaid, and refusals to expand Medicaid, and hospital closings was leading to serious life-threatening healthcare emergencies. Yet, Dr. Pardes remained ignorant of public health disaster caused by the wave of hospital closings instigated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo under Stephen Berger's Medicaid Redesign Team.

HERBERT PARDES: … I think to his credit, the Governor in New York did a good job in terms of putting a cap on the Medicaid budget. And he worked collaboratively with the providers and brought the cost down substantially.

So, the whole story isn’t beautiful, but there are parts which are.

RICHARD HEFFNER: But you’re saying, I gather … and that’s a beautiful point, if, if I understand correctly … that service is not going down, costs are not leveling because people are being less well served.

PARDES: Well, that’s exactly the kind of combined focus that people should undertake. Which is to say, bring costs down, but not at the expense of a clinical care of the patients. And we feel very strongly about that. So wherever we’ve taken out costs and there’s another part to this story, which is New York Presbyterian simply taking out costs … we’ve done it, but protected the clinical care aspect of our hospital. So … (More about the Dim Future of American Medicine * Thirteen.org)

If uninsured or underinsured patients have no insurance under Obamacare because Republican-led states opted out of expanding out of Medicaid, how do Obamacare supporters explain the draconian, scorched-earth campaign by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Wall Street banker Stephen Berger's efforts to close hospitals, which are used as safety net care by the poor, before primary care is set up as a replacement ? Conveniently, it always goes unsaid how the closing of emergency rooms, full-service hospitals, and trauma centers will impact patients' likelihood of survivals (their healthcare outcomes) in life-threatening medical emergencies, when the next nearest full-service hospital or trauma center is further away ?

… A government subsidy, little known outside health policy circles but critical to the hospitals’ survival, is being sharply reduced under the new [Obamacare] health law.

The subsidy, which for years has helped defray the cost of uncompensated and undercompensated care, was cut substantially on the assumption that the hospitals would replace much of the lost income with payments for patients newly covered by Medicaid or private insurance. But now the hospitals in states like Georgia [, which like other Republican-led states, refused to broaden Medicaid after the Supreme Court in 2012 gave states the right to opt out, ] will get neither the new Medicaid patients nor most of the old subsidies, which many say are crucial to the mission of care for the poor. ...

… The cuts in subsidies for safety-net hospitals like Memorial [in Georgia] — those that deliver a significant amount of care to poor, uninsured or otherwise vulnerable patients — are set to total at least $18 billion through 2020. The government has projected that as much as $22 billion more in Medicare subsidies could be cut by 2019, depending partly on the change in the numbers of uninsured nationally.

The cuts are just one of the reductions in government reimbursements that are squeezing hospitals across the country. Some have already announced layoffs. In Georgia, three rural hospitals have closed this year. … (Cuts in Hospital Subsidies Threaten Safety-Net Care * The New York Times)

New York’s Ongoing Blackout: Hospitals in Lower Manhattan (Pro Publica) * St. Vincent’s Is the Lehman Brothers of Hospitals (New York magazine) * Governor Cuomo’s Medicaid cuts may kill 10 city hospitals (The New York Post)

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Dr. Daniel Lugassy At A SCOTUS ACA Reaction Rally Outside St. Vincent's Hospital

Dr. Daniel Lugassy participates in a speak-out at a rally for a single-payer healthcare system outside of the closed St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City. The Affordable Care Act will not end the financial crisis that can devastate patients, should they cannot afford to pay for their healthcare. CNN reported that medical bills lead to more than 60% of bankruptcy filings in the U.S.

Source : http://articles.cnn.com/2009-06-05/health/bankruptcy.medical.bills_1_medical-bills-bankruptcies-health-insurance

Doctors For The 99 Percent Illuminate NYC Area Hospitals

A group called Doctors For The 99% used a large projection device to illuminate messages about healthcare injustice on 3 major NYC hospitals : Columbia University Medical Center on West 168th Street in Manhattan, at Montefiore Medical Center on East 210 Street in the Bronx, and at NYU Langone Medical Center on First Avenue in Manhattan.

Join our coalition of physician activists in support of Occupy. Like us on facebook https://www.facebook.com/doctorsforthe99 and visit us at www.doctorsforthe99.org.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Supreme Court Healthcare Transcripts

March 28, 2012: Transcript from the Supreme Court's hearing on Department of Health and Human Servs. v. Florida.
March 28: Supreme Court Hearing Transcript - Department of Health and Human Servs. v. Florida

March 27, 2012: Transcript from the Supreme Court's hearing on Department of Health and Human Servs. v. Florida.
March 27: Supreme Court Hearing Transcript - Department of Health and Human Servs. v. Florida

March 26, 2012: Transcript from the Supreme Court's hearing on Department of Health and Human Servs. v. Florida.
March 26: Supreme Court Hearing Transcript - Department of Health and Human Servs. v. Florida