Gov. George E. Pataki’s proposed $200 million budget cut for Medicaid will not only jeopardize uninsured New Yorkers, but also threatens as many as 4,000 jobs in the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation.


By ALFREDO ALVARADO

Thanks to Gov. George E. Pataki’s budget ax, the plans of thousands of college students enrolled in the state’s public university system hoping to earn degrees could be destroyed. The governor also stood by, arms folded, as the Metropolitan Transit Authority voted recently to increase subway fares by 33 percent.

Not content to inflict pain solely on students and straphangers, the governor has also targeted the most vulnerable of people, those without health insurance. His proposed budget cuts $200 million in Medicaid funds from the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. The proposed cuts would cost thousands of jobs at HHC facilities, and threaten countless lives.

“It will devastate the entire public health system,” said Carlos Perez, senior vice president of HHC’s South Manhattan Health Care Network. He spoke out at a legislative breakfast at Bellevue Hospital where union leaders, elected officials and the hospital's Community Advisory Board met to denounce the governor’s proposed cutbacks. “One out of every four jobs in Staten Island is a health-related job funded by Medicaid,” said Councilwoman Christine Quinn at the March 6 breakfast. If Mr. Pataki’s budget is approved, Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan could lose as many as 400 jobs. Coler-Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island stands to lose 500 jobs.

Gouverneur Hospital in the Lower East Side would lose $1.1 million in funding while Bellevue could lose $20 million and Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn $5.2 million. HHC’s nursing facilities budget could be reduced by as much as $18.5 million. The entire HHC network, which stretches from North Central Bronx Hospital to Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, could lose as many as 4,000 jobs.

Medicaid provides health care to low-income people. During the Clinton administration, eligibility requirements for Medicaid were relaxed and the administration was more aggressive about enrolling people in the program. Today some 47 million people receive Medicaid, compared to 40 million in 1998. Without Medicaid the percentage of people with no health coverage at all would be much higher.

Last year, HHC treated more than 488,000 uninsured individuals. The hospitals do not get reimbursed for most of these cases. HHC hospitals, clinics and nursing homes are mandated to provide health care to all New Yorkers, regardless of their ability to pay or their citizenship status.

“Public hospitals maintain the fundamental right of health care for everyone,” said Councilwoman Margarita Lopez at the legislative breakfast. “We must fight for the uninsured because it is morally correct,” said Carmen Charles, president of Municipal Hospital Employees Local 420, which has 9,000 members in HHC institutions. “Because the crisis of the uninsured is a crisis for health-care workers, most of whom under the governor’s proposed cuts are one paycheck away from being the uninsured themselves.”

“With the continued terrorist threats, closing them is unthinkable,” said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. “If the state is serious about saving money, they should stop paying millions to outside contractors for work public employees do more effectively and efficiently. Pataki doesn’t even have to do the math. We’ve done it for him.”

District Council 37 has organized a coalition of locals in HHC that includes Locals 924, 983, 371, 768, 375, 436, 1189 and 299, which have been meeting weekly to map out a strategy to fight the proposed cuts. The union will be mobilizing hundreds of members to bus to Albany April 1 for the AFSCME Lobby Day. As PEP went to press, DC 37 was gearing up for demonstrations and leafleting on March 27 at several city hospitals. And the Medicaid cuts will be a major focus April 29 when thousands of union members rally at City Hall Park at 5:30 p.m.

“The unions and the community stopped the privatization of the hospitals in 1995, and together we can stop these Medicaid cuts,” said Vice President Ralph Palladino of Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1549 and a Bellevue CAB member. Local 1549 has 5,300 members that work in city hospitals. The local has launched a letter-writing campaign aimed at City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

The proposed cuts in funding come after a survey by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations ranked five city hospitals among the best in the nation. “The hospital system has made great strides in improving services,” said Ms. Roberts. “Are these outstanding hospitals to be rewarded by having their budgets slashed?”