Showing posts with label Interfaith Medical Center. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interfaith Medical Center. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Turning their backs on LICH, de Blasio and Cuomo stir up community and activist anger

Mayor de Blasio has gone back on his campaign promise to support "hospitals, not condos." And the governor, well, Gov. Cuomo has been trying to close Brooklyn hospitals from Day One.

Mayor de Blasio's staff encouraged community groups to accept the luxury condo conversion of LICH photo de_Blasio_LICH_MFrost_10-28-13_500layoffs_C_0_zps36c823e0.jpg

RELATED


LICH closure causing growing political backlash in Brooklyn ; Mayor, Governor under pressure (The Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

Healthcare As Bargaining Chips in New York City Politics // The Pelican Brief (NYC : News & Analysis)

Disappointment in Mayor Bill de Blasio is turning into community outrage as residents of Brooklyn come to grips with how the mayor's office waged a duplicitous campaign in regards to Long Island College Hospital, or LICH as it is better known.

Publicly, Mayor de Blasio was giving lip service to saving LICH, but privately, some community activists are now saying that the mayor's staff was trying to bully healthcare activists into supporting the closure of the hospital so that a large real estate developer could convert the complex medical campus into luxury condos.

The reality of the mayor's duplicitious nature, while shocking to grassroots activists, comes as no surprise to astute political observers of how the real corrupt nature of the broken political system works in New York City. Mayor de Blasio stormed into office during last year's mayoral election with the aid of a corrupt Super PAC undercuting his chief rival and with promises to provide a clean break from the Bloomberg-Quinn administration. The mayor's empty and meaningless campaign promises weren't made, because he believed in them, but because his campaign consultants knew that the electorate was desperate for change, and that this messaging would help him win the election -- a prediction that turned out to be correct, but that would not fix the broken political system, because that was never the de Blasio campaign's intention.

The latest revelation of the mayor's duplicitous administration comes from an article about LICH in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle :

Following SUNY’s announcement on Friday that it had reached an “agreement in principle” to sell the LICH campus in Cobble Hill to Fortis for development into condos, local officials representing the LICH catchment area issued a statement putting them on the opposite side of the fence with the Mayor, who pushed for the deal.

While campaigning on the theme of "hospitals, not condos," De Blasio has apparently moderated his stance since becoming Mayor, saying that an urgent care center and "stand-alone ER" planned for the site will preserve health care for northwestern Brooklyn. Sources told the Brooklyn Eagle that in February the Mayor's staff put pressure on the community groups fighting for LICH to support Fortis.

The growing political scandal over Mayor de Blasio's betrayal of his campaign promise to save LICH is just the latest example of how the economic realities will fracture Democratic unity : On the city level, nobody knows how the mayor will pay for expansion of pre-kinder, making good on union backpay demands, and fighting income inequality. On the state level, Gov. Andrew Cuomo will use pension IOU vouchers and hospital closings to pay for the $2 billion election year tax cut gimmicks needed to fluff his troubled re-election campaign. Caught in between are healthcare and other social needs reform activists, who are looking to the twin Democratic politicians of New York, asking, "Where's the liberal leadership we can count on ?"

But this fracturing of Democratic unity is only coming about because of how Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo have deceived voters into believing that the Democratic political elite can deliver an overhaul of the broken political system that never answers the demands made by communitys. The elite Democratic politicians will never deliver social, economic, or legal reforms when they are as beholdened to real estate developers as are Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo.

One of Gov. Cuomo's first acts in office was to empanel a controversial Medicaid Redesign Team that has instituted a scorched earth campaign of austerity cuts to the poorest New Yorkers, those who rely on Medicaid for their healthcare. Part of the governor's austerity cuts was to push for the closure of full service hospitals, where the poor and the uninsured seek life-saving, but expensive, healthcare services. His controversial push for more hospital closings came on the heels of the controversial closure of St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, which is being now redeveloped into a $1 billion luxury condo and townhouse complex by the billionaire Rudin family. Because of income and wealth disparities, many of the state's poor people are concentrated in New York City, making it an easy target to close hospitals with a charity mission serving the poor and the uninsured. The governor's plan to cut healthcare costs to the poor was expanded under Obamacare, as more and more poor people qualified for Medicaid, a move that forced Gov. Cuomo to close even more charity hospitals. To augment hospital closings, the Obamacare expansion of the New York State Medicaid program makes it difficult for poor people to receive prescriptions for life-saving, but expensive, prescription medications, like cholesterol-fighting medications and other prescription medications for people with long-term diseases or disorders, like irritable bowel syndrome or other functional gastro-intestinal disorders. Against this backdrop of austerity cuts, the closure of LICH on Mayor de Blasio's and Gov. Cuomo's joint watch is opening the eyes of healthcare activists to the unseemly political reality that Demcoratic politicians, even those that self-annoint themselves as "progressives," are just as neoliberal in their need to make austerity cuts to the poor and to the sick as the former center-right administration of Michael Bloomberg and former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Furthermore, if Mayor Bill de Blasio was uncommitted to saving LICH from the start, in spite of his campaign demands for a moratorium on hospital closings, then this doesn't bode well for Interfaith Medical Center, also in Brooklyn, which has been targeted for closure, as well, by Medicaid Redesign Team hatchetman Stephen Berger and Gov. Cuomo.

Even as the 1199 healthcare union protests the job losses and healthcare cuts by corporate-minded CEO's, note that 1199 strong-armed the Working Families Party to endorse the re-election campaign of Gov. Cuomo, whose very own Medicaid Redesign Team implimented large-scale healthcare cuts, including the outsourcing to Mr. Berger the effort to keep closing city hospitals that have resulted in still yet further healthcare union job losses, not including the negative impact to public health.

How long will it take healthcare activists and other grassroots advocates fighting for unfinished healthcare reforms, such as the adoption of a single-payer healthcare system in New York state to replace Obamacare, before they wake up to see how the corrupt political operatives of some healthcare unions, drunk on the corrupt political Kool-Aid of "business as usual," keep neoliberal Democratic politicians in office, who have no intentions of ever delivering the healthcare reforms that the community demands ?

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Three Brooklyn Hospitals Face Down-sizing, Despite Billions in State and City Resources

No Political Commitment to Save Hospitals

Brookdale Hospital, Interfaith Medical Center, and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center will now have to down-size in order to survive, aides to Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today. No mention was made if Long Island College Hospital, a fourth Brooklyn hospital that has been targeted for closure by Gov. Cuomo, would survive the chopping block.

As part of a controversial Medicaid waiver, New York state must reduce inpatient hospital beds across the board in accordance with the wishes of Stephen Berger, a New York investment banker and member of a working group of Gov. Cuomo's Medicaid Redesign Team. Since 2006, Mr. Berger has overseen the closure or down-sizing of 11 hospitals in New York City alone.

Gov. Cuomo wants to use some of the money from the Medicaid waiver to down-size hospitals into urgent care centers, emergency units, and specialized treatment facilities. “We will be able to fund the structural and rebuilding needed to transform hospitals so they can be profitable and thrive and remain open,” one aide to Gov. Cuomo said.

Because the Medicaid waiver was negotiated in secret, it is not known if any of the down-sized facilities in Brooklyn will "transform" into spin-offs as for-profit healthcare corporations.

No response, yet, from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who campaigned outside the former St. Vincent's Hospital with a promise to stop hospital closings.

Billion in Surplus State and City Budgets

Gov. Cuomo says that New York state has no money to save our hospitals, yet he is spending "surplus" state tax money that was "made" by closing entire hospitals. From this "pot of gold," the governor is offering tax breaks to the wealthy and to corporations, so much so that the Moral Monday movement is now coming to Albany, to fight the irresponsible way in which Gov. Cuomo has politicized state tax dollars. Many observers note that Gov. Cuomo is diverting "surplus" money from healthcare cuts to cozy up to corporate supporters in order to increase his margin of victory in his re-election bid later this year as a way to launch a campaign for the 2016 presidential race.

Mayor de Blasio has also attracted some scrutiny in how he's using tax money. The new mayor enjoys a $3 billion budget surplus, and the city stands to make an additional $1 billion from the sale of new air rights around Grand Central Terminal as part of the mayor's plan to rezone the east side of Midtown Manhattan. But so far, Mayor de Blasio has not proposed to use any of these resources to save two hospitals on the verge of closure, Long Island College Hospital or Interfaith Medical Center, both in Brooklyn.

As each of Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio plan their next budgets, now is the time to hold them to account to save our community hospitals.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Brooklyn Beep Eric Adams Caught in Web of Medicaid Redesign Team, de Blasio, and Cuomo Machinations

Politicians are playing a deadly game with people's lives over the hospital closings crisis that is gripping New York City. But very few politicians own up to the fact that the hospital closing crisis is being manufactured by both the state government under an Orwellian plan first under the Berger Commission and later under the Medicaid Redesign Team, originally dating back to at least 2006.

Because Mayor Bill de Blasio took advantage of health care unions concerned with hospital closings, his mayoral campaign catapulted over former Council Speaker Christine Quinn's own campaign in last year's mayoral election. But now that the mayor is loath to come up with the city tax dollars to actually bail out Long Island College Hospital and Interfaith Medical Center, the lesser-ranking city officials are left in a quandry : afraid to hold the mayor accountable to his campaign promises, but still let to have to "go through the motions" to quell union and voter anger over how quickly the mayor and the Public Advocate's office have abandoned any concrete plans to save full-service hospital care at LICH and Interfaith.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

#Gov1% Andrew Cuomo : The Grim Reaper of Brooklyn Hospital Closings

Gov. Andrew Cuomo - The Grim Reaper of Brooklyn Hospital Closings LICH Interfaith photo 2013-07-24-CuomoGrimReaper_zpse6b78197.jpg

On the Brooklyn Bridge this afternoon, about one thousand activists trying to save ‪#‎LICH‬ and ‪#‎Interfaith‬ took part in a mock funeral march mourning the collapse in public health caused by the threat of several Brooklyn hospital closings. Here, members of OWS Healthcare for the 99% portrayed Gov. Andrew Cuomo as the Grim Reaper responsible for trying to close Brooklyn hospitals.

Read more : March, rally to protest Long Island College Hospital closing

Comparing Christine Quinn with Dr. Jack Kevorkian : Assisting with Early Hospital Deaths

Is Christine Quinn the "Doctor Death" of New York City hospital closings ?

Dr-Jack-Kevorkian-Christine-Quinn-Ten-Assisted-Hospital-Closings photo Dr-Jack-Kevorkian-Christine-Quinn-Ten-Assisted-Hospital-Closings_zpsbe4e40d2.jpg

Will Long Island College Hospital and Interfaith Medical Center be added to this list of hospitals that New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has allowed Real Estate Developers to close ?

Christine Quinn had 10 chances to save 10 NYC hospitals from closing or downsizing.

She saved none.

In the time that Christine Quinn has been Speaker of the New York City Council, ten hospitals have been closed or down-sized :

  • Westchester Square Medical Center in the Bronx became bankrupt and was sold in 2013 ; it is expected to be down-sized into an urgent care center
  • Peninsula Hospital Center in Far Rockaway, Queens, filed for bankruptcy and was closed in 2012
  • North General Hospital in Harlem declared bankruptcy in 2010
  • St. Vincent's Hospital in the West Village was shut down in 2010, so that the Rudin family could build luxury condos
  • St. John's Queens Hospital in Elmhurst went bankrupt in 2009
  • Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica went bankrupt in 2009
  • Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills closed in 2008
  • Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan closed in 2008
  • Victory Memorial Hospital in Bay Ridge closed in 2008
  • St. Vincent's Midtown in Manhattan closed in 2007

If your life depends on comprehensive emergency care, how safe will you be with Christine Quinn as mayor ?

@stopchrisquinn

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Bill de Blasio Finally Joins Fight To Save Brooklyn Hospitals

I don't know how much he really did to try to save St. Vincent's Hospital, but it is finally a good sign that he is at least speaking about the need to stop the hospital closings.

Any merger between two weak hospitals is a bad idea. We should fund each hospital so that it can fully meet the needs of their own patients.

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).

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Interfaith To File For Bankruptcy, May Become Tenth Hospital To Close Under Christine Quinn

Related : J31 Rally to Save Interfaith and LICH outside Gov. Cuomo's Office - Stop Hospital Closings

Interfaith Medical Center Plans To Declare Bankruptcy This Week.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo empaneled a consulting group called the Medicaid Redesign Team headed by investment banker Stephen Berger. The last consulting group headed by Mr. Berger came to be known as the Berger Commission. The tasks of both groups was the same : to identify hospitals to close down, so that New York State could implement cuts to the state's healthcare budget.

In the latest development, it was announced today that Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn plans to file for bankruptcy. The Medicaid Redesign Team has identified three hospitals in Brooklyn, which serve uninsured and underinsured patients for closing ; one of these was Interfaith.

How the Cuomo administration plans to carry out the closings is to merge the financially unstable hospitals together in some combinations, so that that the hospitals can hemorrhage money faster, so that they can end up collapsing under the weight of their combined debts.

Interfaith officials told The New York Times that turning over operational control to Brooklyn Hospital without the state’s first promising the financing needed to keep Interfaith going would be tantamount to a covert plan to close Interfaith in a year and a half or so.

A similar money-losing arrangement was made between a string of hospitals lead by St. Vincent's, which lead to the financial collapse of each hospital : St. Vincent's, St. Johns Queens Hospital, and Mary Immaculate Hospital.

Because the Medicaid Redesign Team's sole purpose has been to make even deeper cuts to the state's healthcare budget, Gov. Cuomo's austerity plan is responsible for the bankruptcy filing. In letters to state officials, Nathan M. Barotz, the chairman of Interfaith's board of trustees, has said that a 2010 cut in Medicaid reïmbursement rates cost Interfaith 40 percent of its inpatient revenue and precipitated its current crisis.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, so many New York City hospitals endured damage. There is a shortage of functioning hospitals right now.

One hospital executive, Michael Dowling, is trying to profit from the disaster that Hurricane Sandy has caused to his competition. Mr. Dowling is head of the parent-holding company of Lenox Hill Hospital. Mr. Dowling opposes opening anymore hospitals, because Lenox Hill Hospital is now making record amounts of money from an influx of patients from the damaged hospitals with which he competes.

NYU Langone Hospital, Bellevue Hospital, and Coney Island Hospital were evaucated after each hospital suffered damage and power failures. None of these hospitals have been able to return to 100% functioning levels. How can it make sense for Gov. Cuomo to keep forcing hospitals to close ?

Related : With Some Hospitals Closed After Hurricane, E.R.’s at Others Overflow

If Interfaith does indeed close, it will become the tenth hospital to close since Christine Quinn became speaker of the New York City Council in 2006.