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Public Employee Press
Activists hold vigil for
threatened health safety net DC
37 was part of a large and diverse coalition of over 100 labor unions, health-care
activists and religious groups that converged on City Hall Park on the evening
of Oct. 26 for a candlelight vigil to demand that the citys health care
safety net remain free of any hospital closings. The threat of hospital
closings looms as the Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century,
a panel put together by outgoing Gov. George E. Pataki, prepares its final proposals.
My mother is a patient at Queens Hospital Center, so I have a stake
in this, said Municipal Hospital Employees Local 420 President Carmen Charles
at the vigil. We have to fight this fight for the voiceless and for the
insured, she said. I had to be here tonight and stand up
and be counted, said Aida Brown, a Clerical Associate at Woodhull Hospital
in Brooklyn and member of Local 1549. Were short of staff there. We
need more doctors and clerical staff. Pataki established the Commission
on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century last year. The panels mission
is to help trim costs by recommending hospital closings and cutbacks in Medicaid
spending. The governor proposes eliminating up to one-third of all hospital beds
in the state about 20,000 of the 62,000 hospital beds to save Medicaid
dollars. Save Our Safety Net, the coalition of labor union and health
care activists battling the commission and the possible hospital closings, supports
Senate Bill 6591, which would make the commission more accountable and change
its evaluation process. The bill was introduced by Senate Minority Leader
David Paterson, who was elected lieutenant governor on Nov. 7, and 21 other Democratic
senators. The proposed legislation would extend the evaluation process into 2007,
when Patersons running mate and the new governor, Eliot Spitzer, takes office.
As PEP went to press the Hospital Closing Commission, as activists
call Patakis commission, was preparing to release its final recommendations,
which will automatically become law and be implemented unless the Legislature
votes to reject its entire package of proposals. | |