Public Employee Press

The 2004 Medicaid cuts hurt everybody

Governor Pataki’s proposed budget would:

• Cut Medicaid funding for services provided to the city’s most vulnerable – nursing home patients, disabled children, the elderly and SSI recipients
• Eliminate services and impose co-pays and fees on low income families covered by Family Health Plus
• Tax Medicaid and other revenues received by HHC for inpatient, nursing home, and home care services it provides
• Punish low-wage workers by barring coverage under Family Health Plus when employers won’t provide health insurance

The 2004 Medicaid cuts will hurt our communities because they will:

• Cut $27 million in resources for needed nursing home care at the four HHC nursing homes. This includes the state’s largest, Coler-Goldwater – the HHC nursing home on Roosevelt Island – which could lose $26 million
• Make it harder for disabled children, seniors and low-wage working families to get coverage
• Eliminate covered services and require patients to pay fees
• Roll back gains in extending Medicaid to low-wage working families and immigrants

Most of HHC’s income is from Medicaid. Our public hospitals serve the vast majority of working people whose employers don’t provide insurance. Where will they go if HHC is forced to stretch fewer dollars to cover more people? We can’t go backwards now. Health care is a right.