Public Employee Press

The de Blasio transition
We need a health-care mayor

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

Calling for a "health care mayor," DC 37 and a coalition of unions, health advocates, elected officials and community groups scathingly decried the Bloomberg administration in its last days.

"Stop the closures! Stop the cuts!" City Hall demonstrators chanted Oct. 30 after HHC shuttered the maternity ward at North Central Bronx Hospital and the Health Dept. closed two immunization clinics and cut hours at clinics that treat thousands with sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS.

"These cuts disproportionately hurt low-income communities and the workers who serve them," DC 37 Associate Director Oliver Gray said. "As Bloomberg's administration ends," he said, "Mayor 'Doom-berg' has shown he's out of touch and way off track cutting vital services in communities that need the health care safety net the most."

Months of protests appeared to be having some effect, as DOHMH postponed closing the Bronx and Queens immunization clinics to year's end and HHC announced in November that it would reopen the NCB maternity ward in about nine months. DC 37 leaders are meeting with management to discuss re-staffing and other issues.

In 12 years as mayor, Bloomberg slashed funds for public health care, closed clinics and cut services of the Health and Hospitals Corp. The demonstrators said New York City needs a health-care mayor who understands HHC's mission and cares about the access to quality public health care, especially for the city's 2.5 million medically underserved residents.

"Cuts are not the answer. The mayor forgot that the function of the Health Department is to protect health, not collect statistics and identify problems but do nothing but cut services," said Local 436 President Judith Arroyo.

"In neighborhoods where public health clinics have closed, working parents lose a day's pay just to get immunizations for themselves and their children," Arroyo said. "When public health clinics are open, the least favored of us can take care of this in about an hour."

Arroyo asked that Bloomberg, DOHMH, and HHC "Consider that behind every dollar cut is a human being." After Bloomberg's first term, HHC paid about $4 million to the private consulting firm Deloitte, whose "Road Ahead" plan, union leaders said, arbitrarily slashed public health services and eliminated jobs at HHC.

Under the Affordable Care Act, public health-care providers expect a "deluge of patients" that will further tax HHC's underfunded system, whose workers are already being asked to do more with less.

"Those making these cuts are out of touch with the workers' and patients' needs," said Dr. David Ishak, a resident at Jacobi Hospital. "We need cooperation, courage and creativity to improve services."

Local 1549 2nd Vice President Ralph Palladino said, "Bloomberg's top-down, heavy-handed cuts do not work. The city should expand hospital services and clinics, not close them."

Union leaders hope to be at the table with Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio in the decision-making process affecting public services and the city's health care system.

"We all stand together as advocates for the patients," said Local 420 President Carmen Charles. "We fight for their needs and our jobs, to preserve the vital care and services we provide because health care is a right, not a privilege!"