(Revised : Thursday 22 Nov 2012 1:15 p.m. EDT) The Rolling Jubilee has now raised over $400,000, which is approximately enough money to abolish over $8,000,000 in notional debt !
Thomas Gokey, an artist who is one of the co-founders of the Rolling Jubilee movement, an Occupy Wall Street off-shoot that raises money to buy debt and then “forgive” what people owe rather than collecting on the bills. (Current TV)
New York City doctors and nurses are sounding a public health alarm on the stressed hospital network after Sandy.
Healthcare activists held a rally on the steps of New York's City Hall to demand that Mayor Michael Bloomberg do more to improve healthcare for survivors of Hurricane Sandy.
Sandy's floodwaters severely damaged NYU Medical Center, Bellevue Hospital, Coney Island Hospital, and Manhattan's VA Medical Center. Patients who would have sought care at those facilities are now turning to other hospitals that remain open. (WNBC)
Emergency room doctor Marisa Fernandez, who has been volunteering in the badly damaged Rockaways neighborhood, said, "We're having to recreate an entire healthcare infrastructure from scratch—everything ranging from assessment and triage of newly housebound individuals, to mobile clinics." (Zimbio)
Despite what some hospital administrators have claimed, Sandy turned out to be exactly what weather forecasters were predicting, so while the Manhattan VA and NY Downtown were evacuated before the storm hit, Bellevue, Coney Island and NYU Langone waited until after. We can't say for sure why--but certainly the loss of revenue may have been a factor in that decision. Even public hospitals depend on reimbursements from patient visits to stay financially viable. (Socialist Worker)
Meet at City Hall this Friday, 11/16, at 12:00 p.m. to tell Mayor Bloomberg that there are urgent unmet healthcare needs caused by Hurricane Sandy !
2012-11-16 Mike Bloomberg City Hall - Hurricane Sandy Relief Rally FlyerDate : Friday, November 16, 2012
Time : 12:00 Noon
Place : City Hall
After Peninsula Hospital closed, St. John's became the only full-service hospital in Far Rockaway. It is now operating at 100% capacity, meaning, it has no more room to take in patients. This condition is compounded by the fact that patients have nowhere to be discharged to, and by the fact that many of the employees have become homeless as a result of Hurricane Sandy.
Nearby nursing homes and adult homes have been evacuated and are not yet re-opened. Electricity continues to be a problem throughout the area and patients with special needs may have lost homes or cannot go back to homes without electricity or heat. Staff, many of them without homes or who have been evacuated, also need places to stay so they can continue to work. Homeless staff are given vouchers for hot meals.
St. John's has set up two funds for donations. To donate to St. John's Episcopal Hospital to continue its efforts to serve the community, please make a check out to St. John's Episcopal Hospital and mail it to St. John's Episcopal Hospital, 327 Beach 19th Street, Far Rockaway, NY 11691. To donate to the Hurricane Sandy Staff Relief Fund, please make the check out to St. John's Episcopal Hospital, and write in the memo "Hurricane Sandy Staff Relief Fund" and mail to the above-mentioned address. To pay by Paypal or Credit Card go to www.ehs.org.
Separately, WCBS 2 News did a piece about how the people in the Upper East Side are now beginning to complain about all the people from Lower Manhattan swarming their hospitals.
Maybe it is going to take complaints by UES residents to ring alarm bells about the uneven distribution of hospital beds in Lower Manhattan ?
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.
2013 New York City Mayoral Candidate Bill Thompson posted this photograph on Facebook with this caption :
"I just witnessed chaos at 2950 West 33rd Street poll site in Coney Island. The site didn't open until after 9 a.m., and then the machines were not ready. This is the line to vote."
I posted a comment on the photograph, thanking Mr. Thompson for sharing this information. I also asked Mr. Thompson if he would help bring reforms to the Board of Elections. Later in the day, when I went to blog this photo, I noticed that I had been unfriended by Mr. Thompson. So, I guess he won't agree to help bring reforms to the Board of Elections ?
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 :
Related : NYC Hurricane Sandy - Hospital Evacuations and Berger Commission #EPICFAIL
Mayor Concedes To Critics : Cancels Marathon : What Took So Long ?
Race organisers, including the Rudin Family, the New York Road Runners Club, and ING, used Mayor Michael Bloomberg to be the fall guy for criticism about the city using valuable resources to hold the New York City Marathon. Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg was forced to cancel the marathon after The New York Post reported that at least 41 generators were being hoarded by race officials. Meanwhile, large numbers of New York City residents were rendered homeless with little to no resources for food, shelter, heat, health, or safety in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
Many storm victims were outraged at all the resources, not just power generators, that were being hoarded by marathon organisers for the sole benefit of runners.
"Runners were set to dine on a lavish Saturday-evening pre-race meal that included lemon-thyme chicken with shallot jus, and autumn vegetable bow-tie pasta primavera with extra virgin oil and fresh herbs — which most storm victims would have killed for," reported The New York Post.
"More than 2,000 cops are typically assigned to work the marathon. About five years ago, the city started privatizing medical coverage at the event, although scores of city paramedics and EMTs are still assigned to the race," reported The New York Daily News.
Bill Rudin said that it would be safe to close St. Vincent's Hospital, which was the only Level I Trauma Center and full-service hospital in the Lower West Side of Manhattan. He and his billion-dollar real estate development company got easy building permits, zone-busting waivers, and approvals from New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. At the time, Mr. Rudin and Speaker Quinn said that if people in Lower Manhattan became sick, or if there was a mass civilian trauma event, patients could be transported to Bellevue Hospital, which was the next closest Level I Trauma Center.
But the aftermath of hospital evacuations at NYU Langone and Bellevue Hospitals following destruction by caused by Hurricane Sandy expose the risks of the Rudin Condo Conversion Plan approved for St. Vincent's Hospital.
Note that the NYC Marathon would have three giant electricity generators, which would be used for the media tent, meanwhile, NYU Langone and Bellevue Hospitals had to be evacuated due to backup generator failures.
Watch this NBC News report about the hurricane destruction. Note that Mr. Rudin is a sponsor of the NYC Marathon, and he wants the Marathon to still take place this week-end, even though first responders haven't yet finished recovering all the dead bodies on Staten Island, or, for that matter, ensuring public safety or providing emergency care to the people rendered homeless by the tsunami of the storm surge and flooding.
Rockaway Beach Nursing Homes Told Not To Evacuate Ahead Of Hurricane Sandy, Officials Say
Five nursing homes in floods zones in New York City were told by officials not to evacuate before Hurricane Sandy made landfall, The Huffington Post reported.
Residents of the nursing homes, which were located just blocks off the New York City coastline with the Atlantic Ocean, experienced the horror of Hurricane Sandy's destructive winds, rains, and storm surge.
"It was like Niagara Falls," said an employee, who asked to remain anonymous, about the four foot flooding on the first floor of Rockaway Care Center.
"The New York Office of Emergency Management did not return multiple calls or emails about the condition of the nursing homes, the status of the residents, or the decision not to evacuate prior to the storm," reported The Huffington Post.
While politicians, such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and Queens Borough President Helen Marshall tour some of the areas devastated by Hurricane Sandy, politicians are using the emergency with the subway system and the power outages to cover up for the hospital evacuation crisis, this nursing home crisis, and the upcoming Election Day voting crisis.
Gary Tilzer, the political journalist, posted a blog post in which he asked, "Why Is the Media Silent On the Board of Elections Lack of A Plan to Allow People to Vote in the Black Out Areas ?"
Who is politically accountable for the failure of the emergency management plan in response to Hurricane Sandy that lead to infrastructure failure at New York City hospitals ?
Following the infrastructure failure of critical hospitals in New York City because of flooding and storm surge associated with Hurricane Sandy and related power failures, some healthcare activists began to demand answers for the failure of New York City's emergency management planning. The fault does not lie with the doctors and medical staff at the impacted hospitals ; rather, the politicians in charge of the city's emergency management plan must account for this irresponsible and dangerous situation. How could it be that New York City's resources would prioritise reopening business when critical hospitals could be left in the dark ? One activist has posted a new YouTube video requesting political accountability for the dangerous risks posed to public health by Mayor Michael Bloomberg's lack of real emergency planning.
Video Link : http://youtu.be/ggjOOjbTKZs
Background
In the community effort to demand a replacement hospital for St. Vincent's, politicians imposed on the community the burden of participating in a needs assessment to determine if a full-service hospital was required in the Lower West Side of Manhattan.
"The hospital evacuations following the destruction by Hurricane Sandy expose the risks of the Rudin Condo Conversion Plan approved for St. Vincent's Hospital," said Louis Flores, an activist who produced this YouTube video. "New York City needs a Level I Trauma Center and full-service hospital in the Lower West Side for disaster recovery efforts. And New York City needs real resources to improve the infrastructure of all of our hospitals, including Coler Hospital on Roosevelt Island and SUNY Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn."
Hurricane Irene
In 2011, St. Vincent's activists organized a mass civilian trauma event exercise to demonstrate what grassroots community activists described was a major risk to public health : where would sick and injured patients receive emergency and trauma care in the event of a major national disaster under conditions that had created an irresponsible geographic distribution of hospital beds in Manhattan.
See related link : http://thevillager.com/villager_443/traumadrama.html
Hurricane Sandy
In the time leading up to and following the landfall of the effects of Hurricane Sandy, the infrastructure of full-service hospitals on the East Side of Manhattan has failed. Hospital patients were forced to be evacuated from NYU Langone and Bellevue Hospitals.
To Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Speaker Christine Quinn, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, to City Planner Amanda Burden, Brad Hoylman, Bill Rudin, and to the Partnership for New York, where are New Yorkers supposed to go now, in case of a medical emergency ?
Hurricane Sandy Exposes Risks Of Closing of St. Vincent's Hospital.
The New York City Fire Department is helping Bellevue Hospital evacuate some of it patients, the Associated Press has reported.
Bellevue Hospital lost power during the blackout created by the storm surge, flooding, and damage from Hurricane Sandy.
Even with backup power operating, the Associated Press reported that the power outage had left many sections of Bellevue Hospital in the dark and rendered major medical equipment unusable without access to electricity.
After St. Vincent's Hospital was closed, activists had demanded that politicians explain how mass trauma events would be handled with the irresponsible geographical distribution of hospital beds in Manhattan created by the Rudin Luxury Condo Conversion plan approved by New York City Council Christine Quinn.
After St. Vincent's Hospital closed, a Gross Imbalance in the Distribution of Hospital Beds in Manhattan
