Public Employee Press

Privatizing and cuts threaten patient care at public hospitals

DC37 activists and leaders ended 2011 with stern warnings to the Health and Hospitals Corp. against coping with its daunting fiscal challenges by privatizing or reducing health-care services in 2012.

"HHC is being sold off piecemeal to profiteers, and we cannot afford this," said Local 420 Chapter Chair Cynthia Bobbitt, who works at Brooklyn's Susan Smith McKinney Rehab Center, a long-term care facility. "When it comes to direct patient care, the cuts are already too deep. Our members are the caregivers who feed patients when they wake and help them to bed at night. We give them the care we would want for ourselves and our family members. Cuts have a negative impact on our ability to deliver quality care."

Bobbitt testified Dec. 7 at Woodhull Hospital in one of the five annual meetings HHC held citywide to inform the public of its plans and hear from employees, unions, patients and health-care advocates. Representing 18,000 HHC employees and tens of thousands of community residents, DC 37 is a strong advocate for public health-care services.

HHC serves about 1.3 million New Yorkers, regardless of their ability to pay, with Medicaid covering about 75 percent of the cost. But since 2008, HHC has eliminated 2,500 positions, laid off 150 Laborers and skilled trades workers, shuttered its laundry and contracted out linen services to mega-profiteer Sodexo, Inc.

"Health-care costs are increasing as funding is decreasing," said Moira Dolan of the union's Research and Negotiations Dept., representing DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. Suggestions from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Medicaid Redesign Team to cut overall Medicaid funding by another $2 billion would jeopardize more jobs and vital services, she said. (See page 5.)

"Public dollars should be for the public, not to profit the private sector," Dolan said, warning that plans to cut Community Alternative Systems Administration caseworkers in HRA and use for-profit managed care organizations and further privatize dialysis services in HHC would hurt patients with no significant savings.