Public Employee Press

Union hits Cuomo's Medicaid cuts

Together with community organizations and health-care advocates, District Council 37 is battling the deep and damaging cutbacks that Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants in the state Medicaid program.

The budget slashes - the largest in history according to the Healthcare Association of New York State - would take an estimated $130 million to $150 million from the Health and Hospitals Corp., New York City's safety net health-care system. HHC, which relies on Medicaid for 70 percent of its revenue, has already been hit with state Medicaid cuts totaling $330 million over the last three years.

Cuomo's $2.38 billion cut in fiscal year 2011-12 is based in part on recommendations he received Feb. 24 from his Medicaid Redesign Team. The cut would cause a loss of federal matching funds and a combined reduction of more than $4.5 billion in the state's Medicaid budget this year. Cuomo's planned cut would come on top of former Gov. David Paterson's 2010 cut of $1.4 billion.

One-sided input

"The governor announced fixed targets to reduce Medicaid without even waiting for the recommendations of his handpicked Medicaid Redesign Team," said District Council 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts.

"He did not include anyone from any HHC safety net hospital or from DC 37, which represents 18,000 members who work on the frontlines at HHC facilities," Roberts pointed out. Although public and private hospitals compete for state healthcare funding, the governor's review team had representatives of private hospitals but no public health advocates.

Devastating for HHC

DC 37 leaders who testified Feb. 4 at a MRT hearing cited the huge potential human costs of the cutback plans. Of the MRT recommendations, the governor adopted 79 proposals to slash billions from Medicaid. These include moving Medicaid patients into mandatory managed care and limiting malpractice damages for pain and suffering to $250,000.

"Reductions of this magnitude would make it nearly impossible for HHC to continue to provide quality care to its millions of patients, including the uninsured," said DC 37 Field Operations Director Barbara Edmonds. "New York City's poorest communities of color, immigrant communities, children and seniors
would be seriously harmed by these proposed cuts."

"Cutting Medicaid would cost this city patient services and jobs and have devastating effects on our already fragile economy," Local 1549 Second Vice President Ralph Palladino testified. "The discussion should not be about how much to cut but how we can enhance public health."

In the struggle to preserve Medicaid funding, DC37 has partnered with the Save Our Safety Net Campaign, a coalition of labor unions, health-care advocates and faith-based organizations committed to protecting the vital services the public health care system provides for communities most in need.

The city's Health and Hospitals Corp. is the sole health-care safety net for millions of poor and elderly New Yorkers and 450,000 uninsured residents. As joblessness soars, so does the number of New Yorkers who rely on HHC hospitals and clinics.

"Significant service reductions"

HHC cannot absorb Cuomo's cuts "without significant service reductions," said HHC Senior Vice President LaRay Brown.

The loss of state Medicaid funds will also force the city Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene to scale back HIV services, services at child health clinics and outpatient pharmacies and programs for patients who are developmentally delayed, disabled and chemically dependent, said Moira Dolan, senior assistant director of the DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept.

"Cuomo may call it restructuring," said Roberts, "but his misguided Medicaid cuts will undermine the city's health-care safety net, and that is a tragedy the people of this city cannot afford."