Rally to Save Interfaith and LICH outside Cuomo's Office

Call Gov. Andrew Cuomo : (212) 681-4580. Tell him : Save our hospitals !

Rally on 31 Jan 2013 to save Interfaith Hospital and Long Island College Hospital (LICH) in Brooklyn.

Gov. Cuomo and his political aide, the investment banker monster Stephen Berger, are obsessed with closing hospitals. And now, they are setting up "for profit" hospitals in Brooklyn. This is dangerous !!

Gov. Cuomo, in a supreme act of failed neoliberalism policies, has proposed to make Brooklyn one of two counties in the state as a pilot project, in which current state regulations would be to waived to allow for-profit health care investments. (Read more : Judy Wessler).

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.

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.

Bellevue Morgue Under Water

In a post about the final two patients still remaining at Bellevue Hospital, The New York Times obtained details about some of the severe conditions inside the hospital's morgue :

The sources also said that after Hurricane Sandy hit, the Bellevue morgue was under water, so the bodies of patients who died of their illnesses after the storm had to be kept elsewhere. Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner, confirmed that the Bellevue morgue had been flooded, but that with the assistance of the medical examiner, the bodies had been put on higher racks to keep them out of the water.

She did not know how many bodies there were. Ms. Borakove said the medical examiner’s morgue, which is separate, remained dry.

What is missing from these incremental reports about the deteriorating conditions at many hospitals in the wake of Hurricane Sandy is the failure of the mayor's emergency management plan that did not anticipate for infrastructure failures.

Not only that, but the New York State Department of Health has responsibility, for the irresponsible distribution of hospital beds in Manhattan. After nine New York City hospitals have closed, how do Gov. Andrew Cuomo ; Dr. Nirav Shah, the Secretary of the State Department of Health ; Stephen Berger, who continues to advocate for still yet more hospital closings ; and other statue health officials now view the issue of reducing the number of hospitals, when a mass civilian trauma event or natural disaster can destroy the infrastructure of the fewer remaining hospitals we have now ?

Here's an Associated Press video of the beginning of the evacuation of Bellevue Hospital :

$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%

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.