Showing posts with label Berger Commission Report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Berger Commission Report. Show all posts

Friday, February 1, 2013

Rally to Save Interfaith and LICH outside Cuomo's Office

Call Gov. Andrew Cuomo : (212) 681-4580. Tell him : Save our hospitals !

Rally on 31 Jan 2013 to save Interfaith Hospital and Long Island College Hospital (LICH) in Brooklyn.

Gov. Cuomo and his political aide, the investment banker monster Stephen Berger, are obsessed with closing hospitals. And now, they are setting up "for profit" hospitals in Brooklyn. This is dangerous !!

Gov. Cuomo, in a supreme act of failed neoliberalism policies, has proposed to make Brooklyn one of two counties in the state as a pilot project, in which current state regulations would be to waived to allow for-profit health care investments. (Read more : Judy Wessler).

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Bellevue Morgue Under Water

In a post about the final two patients still remaining at Bellevue Hospital, The New York Times obtained details about some of the severe conditions inside the hospital's morgue :

The sources also said that after Hurricane Sandy hit, the Bellevue morgue was under water, so the bodies of patients who died of their illnesses after the storm had to be kept elsewhere. Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner, confirmed that the Bellevue morgue had been flooded, but that with the assistance of the medical examiner, the bodies had been put on higher racks to keep them out of the water.

She did not know how many bodies there were. Ms. Borakove said the medical examiner’s morgue, which is separate, remained dry.

What is missing from these incremental reports about the deteriorating conditions at many hospitals in the wake of Hurricane Sandy is the failure of the mayor's emergency management plan that did not anticipate for infrastructure failures.

Not only that, but the New York State Department of Health has responsibility, for the irresponsible distribution of hospital beds in Manhattan. After nine New York City hospitals have closed, how do Gov. Andrew Cuomo ; Dr. Nirav Shah, the Secretary of the State Department of Health ; Stephen Berger, who continues to advocate for still yet more hospital closings ; and other statue health officials now view the issue of reducing the number of hospitals, when a mass civilian trauma event or natural disaster can destroy the infrastructure of the fewer remaining hospitals we have now ?

Here's an Associated Press video of the beginning of the evacuation of Bellevue Hospital :

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

$10 billion bonanza, but none of it to save New York safety net hospitals ?

During the course of many years, New York politicians have gone along with a radical plan to close safety net hospitals in a scorched campaign against spiraling healthcare costs. Hospitals with charity missions, like St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village flat-lined as a way to cut off hospitals that served the uninsured, underinsured, and Medicaid-insured.

Related : St. Vincent's Hospital closing was a 'significant disaster,' says Bellevue chief (NYDailyNews

Now comes New York Andrew Cuomo, with news that his austerity program to slash Medicaid will yield a $10 billion bonanza from the federal government, but none of that money, nor any effort to reform any other parts of the state budget, were made to save the many hospitals that have been closed by NYS Department of Health officials : nine hospital have closed in New York City alone during the time that Christine Quinn has been speaker of the City Council.

Media outlets, that promote Gov. Cuomo's neo-liberal agenda, praise the governor's budget cuts and hospital closings, even though Gov. Cuomo delegating all the draconian work to Stephen Berger, who, together with the governor, are shredding the safety net and gutting the very programs that help people with the least.