Andrew Cuomo's Public Health Perfect Storm

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo will be using the 2013-2014 state budget to help turn the Buffalo Bills NFL team around. Gov. Cuomo announced that the state would extend $60 million to the "floundering franchise."

"The Buffalo Bills are staying in New York, that's the good news," Gov. Cuomo told City & State. "All I can tell you is for $60 million, the Bills better win this year."

• Gov. Cuomo Orders Audit Of SUNY Downstate Hospital That Blames The Hospital For Treating Medicaid Patients And For Merging Together : "Mr. DiNapoli also blamed competition for patients, over-reliance on Medicaid revenues despite cuts in financing and the ill-advised acquisition of two hospitals, Victory Memorial Hospital in July 2008 and Long Island College Hospital, known as LICH, in May 2011. 'Consultant studies used as justification for the purchase were based on flawed, unrealistic business assumptions,' according to Mr. DiNapoli," The New York Times reported.
• Leery Of A Merger Being Thrust Upon It By Cuomo And Stephen Berger, InterFaith Hospital In Brooklyn Plans To Declare Bankruptcy : A year ago, a Brooklyn work group of the governor’s Medicaid Redesign Team, which was created to find savings in the hospital and health industry, recommended that Interfaith merge with two other Brooklyn hospitals, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center and Brooklyn Hospital.
• Angel Investors Trying To Save Westchester Square Medical Center, Because Andrew Cuomo Is Using Your Tax Dollars To Bailout An NFL Team : ... "A last-minute competing offer has emerged from a group of real-estate investors, who are offering to pay $14.4 million for the hospital's assets and lease it back to the hospital, which would continue to operate as a nonprofit with the same board of directors," The Wall Street Journal reported.

Many of the hospitals, which were damaged by Hurricane Sandy, have not fully recovered. And public health has been compromised by the ongoing spree of hospital closings under Gov. Cuomo and his henchman, the mean old man Stephen Berger. Add to that the flu epidemic, and you have all the makings of a perfect storm in public health.

New York Politicians Close Hospitals, Endanger Public Health

Update On Hospital Activism In New York City Following Hurricane Sandy Aftermath, Berger Commission Scorched Earth Campaign, and Medicaid Redesign Team Destruction

The latest article about the hospital closings in New York City caused by Hurricane Sandy shows that the irresponsible Berger Commission and Medicaid Redesign Team actions to close down hospitals is endangering public health.

The math is unforgiving: people get sick, and they now have nowhere else to go, a problem exacerbated by the shutdown of St. Vincent’s hospital in the West Village. Last year, emergency rooms at the city’s Bellevue Hospital Center and the private NYU Langone Medical Center saw nearly 150,000 patients combined, according to state Department of Health data. In November alone, the third busiest month for both hospitals, more 14,000 patients received care. And the lion’s share are now being cared for by Beth Israel. (The New York World)

Note : the closing of St. Vincent's wasn't only tied to the attitude up in Albany to close hospitals under the severe safety net-shredding Berger/MRT austerity budget cuts, but also due to the self-seeking motivations by politicians, such as New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Some of the St. Vincent's activists have launched a letter-writing campaign to newspapers ; Gov. Cuomo ; and to Dr. Shah, the health commish.

Urgent care needed
Manhattan: Rep. Gregory Meeks and Anthony Weiner’s guest column on the need for a hospital to serve the Rockaways, especially after Sandy, points up the need for a safety net everywhere (“The Rockaways, on solid ground,” Nov. 28). The lower west quadrant of Manhattan has had no hospital since St. Vincent’s closed. In addition, several nearby hospitals were forced to shut down temporarily because of Sandy. We need well-constructed, full-service hospitals in good strategic positions to serve communities and avoid storm damage. -- Carol F. Yost

Despite Public Health Risks Caused By Hurricane Sandy, Gov. Andrew Cuomo Is Still Dangerously Obsessed With Closing More Hospitals.

Meanwhile, given the dire hospital situation in Brooklyn (Interfaith Files For Bankruptcy ; Half of Brooklyn hospitals on life support), nobody knows if the healthcare money from Hurricane Sandy aid will be used to make sure that we equally meet the healthcare needs of patients across all five boroughs.

When Hurricane Sandy struck, NYU Langone was in the middle of fundraising for a $3 billion renovation/upgrade. Few hospitals have those kinds of resources.

But of the first $200 million in federal aid receive for hurricane relief, Langone received $114 million. (NY Daily News) * How are politicians prioritising which medical centers get funded ? Based on need, or based on the corruptive influence of special interests ?

No word yet on whether Gov. Andrew Cuomo will set aside some of the billions in hurricane relief aid to fund a healthcare system that will equally meet the healthcare needs of patients across all five boroughs of New York City, much less the resumption of operations at Bellevue and Coney Island hospitals.

Look for healthcare activists to escalate their protests, to push back on these irresponsible healthcare cuts that impact poor people. Research shows that because we do not have a truly universal, single-payer healthcare system, the network of fractured healthcare providers that we do have do not make available healthcare services to everybody, equally. One of the leading reasons that poor people rely on hospitals or emergency rooms for healthcare is because there are few physicians with medical practices in their neighborhoods, much less a true means for poor people to afford primary healthcare. Given that Gov. Cuomo is now targeting the less wealthy central neighborhoods of Brooklyn for hospital closings, the governor is gutting the few remaining safety net healthcare services still available to the uninsured and underinsured. How much can the governor cut healthcare before people start suffering for lack of emergency medical treatment ?

Hurricane Sandy Hospital Crisis Grows

From True News From Change NYC :

Closing of NYU and Bellevue Hospitals Because of Sandy Should Have Been A Wakeup Call That NYC Has A Hospital Crisis.

New Yorkers are Getting Sicker and Even Dying (esp. the poor) Because of A Hospital Crisis Made Worse by the Floods . . . Where is the Pols, Media and Activist Outrage?

Nobody Notices Hospital Crisis Or Sandy's Wake Up Call

With Some Hospitals Closed After Hurricane, E.R.’s at Others Overflow (NYT) Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn had 1,100 more emergency patients last month than in November 2011; the increase was mostly attributed to a hospital shut by the storm. * Hospital in Brooklyn Files for Bankruptcy Protection (NYT) Some New York medical centers are adding extra shifts and converting offices and lobbies into space for patients as emergency room visits surge. * Half of Brooklyn hospitals on life support | Crain's New York Business

The Angry New Yorker's Who Demanded Their Rights is Gone

Where are the Mayoral Candidates on the Hospital Crisis?

Why Is There No Movement To Save These Hospitals Like There Was in 1980 Against the Closing of Sydenham Hospital? 3 hospitals closed in Queens, St Vincent's murdered for a Co-op in Manhattan, 5 hospitals in trouble in Brooklyn. The activist and progressives are all over Facebook and twitter demanding pay for fasttfood workers because it is being pushed by unions looking for membership. It is very stranged that these same activists are silent on the health care needs of many of these workers who depend on the hospital system for all their health care needs. Could it be that the help unions provide the reason the activist are supporting their issues?

Interfaith To File For Bankruptcy, May Become Tenth Hospital To Close Under Christine Quinn

Related : J31 Rally to Save Interfaith and LICH outside Gov. Cuomo's Office - Stop Hospital Closings

Interfaith Medical Center Plans To Declare Bankruptcy This Week.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo empaneled a consulting group called the Medicaid Redesign Team headed by investment banker Stephen Berger. The last consulting group headed by Mr. Berger came to be known as the Berger Commission. The tasks of both groups was the same : to identify hospitals to close down, so that New York State could implement cuts to the state's healthcare budget.

In the latest development, it was announced today that Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn plans to file for bankruptcy. The Medicaid Redesign Team has identified three hospitals in Brooklyn, which serve uninsured and underinsured patients for closing ; one of these was Interfaith.

How the Cuomo administration plans to carry out the closings is to merge the financially unstable hospitals together in some combinations, so that that the hospitals can hemorrhage money faster, so that they can end up collapsing under the weight of their combined debts.

Interfaith officials told The New York Times that turning over operational control to Brooklyn Hospital without the state’s first promising the financing needed to keep Interfaith going would be tantamount to a covert plan to close Interfaith in a year and a half or so.

A similar money-losing arrangement was made between a string of hospitals lead by St. Vincent's, which lead to the financial collapse of each hospital : St. Vincent's, St. Johns Queens Hospital, and Mary Immaculate Hospital.

Because the Medicaid Redesign Team's sole purpose has been to make even deeper cuts to the state's healthcare budget, Gov. Cuomo's austerity plan is responsible for the bankruptcy filing. In letters to state officials, Nathan M. Barotz, the chairman of Interfaith's board of trustees, has said that a 2010 cut in Medicaid reïmbursement rates cost Interfaith 40 percent of its inpatient revenue and precipitated its current crisis.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, so many New York City hospitals endured damage. There is a shortage of functioning hospitals right now.

One hospital executive, Michael Dowling, is trying to profit from the disaster that Hurricane Sandy has caused to his competition. Mr. Dowling is head of the parent-holding company of Lenox Hill Hospital. Mr. Dowling opposes opening anymore hospitals, because Lenox Hill Hospital is now making record amounts of money from an influx of patients from the damaged hospitals with which he competes.

NYU Langone Hospital, Bellevue Hospital, and Coney Island Hospital were evaucated after each hospital suffered damage and power failures. None of these hospitals have been able to return to 100% functioning levels. How can it make sense for Gov. Cuomo to keep forcing hospitals to close ?

Related : With Some Hospitals Closed After Hurricane, E.R.’s at Others Overflow

If Interfaith does indeed close, it will become the tenth hospital to close since Christine Quinn became speaker of the New York City Council in 2006.

NYC Hurricane Sandy - Hospital Evacuations and Berger Commission - FAIL

Why is it acceptable for us to allow hospitals go through such desperate attempts to equally and adequately fund the healthcare needs of patients ? Look at the consequences of the blackouts of New York City hospitals in Lower Manhattan.

The issue before us is whether the rebuilding of our hospitals will continue to favour wealthy institutions, which primarily serve the well-insured, or will we use this opportunity to examine and fix the unequal distribution of healthcare in New York created by the Berger Commission ?

As it is, we are on a path that will continue to force us to accept less and less. Look at how nursing homes were instructed by health officials not to evacuate, and then they are criticised by the Department of Health for unacceptable conditions compounded precisely because they were instructed not to evacuate. Is this acceptable ?

If we believe in the dignity and equality of all people, then our healthcare system must be reformed to provide patient care-centered healthcare, to equally meet the needs of all patients. Please support a truly universal, single-payer healthcare system.

$10 billion bonanza, but none of it to save New York safety net hospitals ?

During the course of many years, New York politicians have gone along with a radical plan to close safety net hospitals in a scorched campaign against spiraling healthcare costs. Hospitals with charity missions, like St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village flat-lined as a way to cut off hospitals that served the uninsured, underinsured, and Medicaid-insured.

Related : St. Vincent's Hospital closing was a 'significant disaster,' says Bellevue chief (NYDailyNews

Now comes New York Andrew Cuomo, with news that his austerity program to slash Medicaid will yield a $10 billion bonanza from the federal government, but none of that money, nor any effort to reform any other parts of the state budget, were made to save the many hospitals that have been closed by NYS Department of Health officials : nine hospital have closed in New York City alone during the time that Christine Quinn has been speaker of the City Council.

Media outlets, that promote Gov. Cuomo's neo-liberal agenda, praise the governor's budget cuts and hospital closings, even though Gov. Cuomo delegating all the draconian work to Stephen Berger, who, together with the governor, are shredding the safety net and gutting the very programs that help people with the least.

El Servicio de Salud es un Derecho Humano

Salvemos el Hospital Wyckoff - Salud Para el 99%

Single Payer Healthcare Lobby Day

Register to attend the Physicians for a National Health Program Albany Lobby Day : Tuesday, May 8, 2012.

Private health insurance is eating us alive. We need single payer in New York State.

Assemblyman Dick Gottfried and State Senator Tom Duane are introducing a new-and-improved single payer bill. Join doctors, nurses and patients across the state in advocating for a truly universal and affordable health care system for New York !

Who is Stephen Berger ?

Who is Stephen Berger ?

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has set out to cut Medicare and Medicaid reïmbursements in the New York State budget by empowering Stephen Berger, the chairman of a private investment firm, to close entire hospitals in Brooklyn.

Michael Dowling Andrew Cuomo Medicaid Cuts

The New York Medicaid Redesign Team (MRT) is a 27-member body charged with cutting $2.85 billion from the state's Medicaid budget, so that Gov. Andrew Cuomo would not look like the bad guy.

In 2011, the MRT was scheduled to meet for 2 full days and have 4 days for consumers, advocates and other stakeholders to review proposals and offer feedback.

The team, however, decided that they could skip this process and push forward a vote to approve the package 4 days early. Effectively ignoring the voices and opinions of all those not on the team.