Public Employee Press


Viewpoint
Our Public Hospitals are on life support

A strong public health system in New York is vital. It is critical for poor and uninsured patients, and it helps contain health-care costs.

By RALPH PALLADINO

Did you know that the city's public health network, NYC Health + Hospitals, nearly missed funding its payroll several times this past year?

Did you know the NYC Health + Hospitals (formerly known as the Health and Hospitals Corp.) must now reduce staffing by nearly 2,000 positions?

Did you know that the manner in which the state distributes funds for training and reorganization and the governor's Medicaid cap imposed a few years ago are totally unfair to our public hospitals? Private hospitals get the lion's share of funding at the of expense of public hospitals. State funds are supposed to reflect where the Medicaid recipients and uninsured go for service, but they largely do not.

Our public hospital system is under siege. The fight for public health and fairness in the allocation of state funding is vital to all those who work and use the facilities of the public hospital system.

Almost 20 percent of DC 37's members work in the city's public hospitals system. A loss of members would adversely impact DC 37's overall strength and budget.

A strong public health system in New York is vital. It is critical for poor and uninsured patients, and it helps contain health-care costs. NYC Health + Hospitals is an efficient health system. It is still the last option for those without insurance. The overhead of 5 percent is far below the administrative costs of the private hospitals, which is close to 20 percent.

Since the 1970s, our union, public health advocates, the City Council and community residents all have joined at different times to beat back the attacks on the public health-care system.

Mayor Ed Koch closed some hospitals in the early 1980s. But he did not succeed in closing Metropolitan Hospital, where a community-labor coalition stopped him.

When Koch closed West Harlem's Sydenham Hospital, union and community leaders staged a sit-in. Though Koch won, he later described closing Sydenham as his biggest mistake and never tried to close another hospital.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to privatize the public hospital system, beginning with Queens and Coney Island hospitals. Other unions joined DC 37 in funding and staffing community coalitions to fight for the hospitals.

Municipal Hospital Employees Local 420 organized demonstrations supported by others, including Clerical-Administrative Local 1549.

Unions and community leaders and members spoke at and disrupted hearings around the city. Recently, DC 37 organized Health Education Action Teams and enlisted members to petition and call elected officials to protest of Medicaid and other cuts. Other unions joined this effort.

Throughout the years, these campaigns have thwarted attacks on the public health-care system. Our union has succeeded in beating back closures, large-scale privatization of institutions and horrific budget cuts.

But today, the entire public health-care system is threatened with drastic reductions in size and services. I believe this threat may lead the public hospital system to become an appendage of the private non-profits.

So, it is imperative that everyone in DC 37 step up and join the fight for fairness. We have to continue to build our union and make it stronger. We cannot afford to lose our great public health system.

Ralph Palladino, Local 1549 2nd vice president, is a patient at an NYC Health + Hospitals facility.