Employed and Unemployed: Unite to Fight Racist Healthcare Cuts

BROOKLYN, NY February 14 — Long Island College Hospital (LICH) is at risk of closing. LICH employs about 2,500 workers and serves the Red Hook Houses, the largest public housing project in Brooklyn, with over 10,000 black and Latino workers and youth. LICH is a 300-bed hospital that delivers more than 2,500 babies and sees more than 55,000 patients in its emergency room every year.

The State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center had been poised to take over LICH, which would have been bad enough, threatening the entire emergency services department. But last Wednesday, Democratic Governor Cuomo put that on hold when he announced a $2.84 billion cut in Medicaid, freezing the $62 million for the Downstate take-over and threatening to close LICH. As we go to press, a deal may be in the works to release some or all of the take-over money. Either way, there will be less health care for the workers and youth who need it.

Whether LICH closes or not, capitalism can never meet the needs of the working class because it puts profits over healthcare. Goldman Sachs gave out executive bonuses totaling $15.3 billion in 2010 and Mayor Bloomberg’s personal fortune hit $18 billion, while 30 million are unemployed and over $1 trillion goes to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact that closing LICH is even being considered illustrates capitalism’s inherent racism.

Ten other hospitals are also on the chopping block in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. In Brooklyn alone 16,000 hospital jobs are at risk at five hospitals that treated over 250,000 patients in 2010 and serve nearly a million. Eight hospitals have closed since 2007, including St. Vincent’s in lower Manhattan and North General in Harlem last year.

PLP supports the growing unity of workers and patients to fight these attacks at both LICH and SUNY Downstate. Last week, some LICH EMS workers went to the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) over the lack of visible addresses in the Red Hook Houses.  Ambulances respond to 911 calls there, but due to the lack of visibile building numbers, Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) are often forced to jump out of the ambulance and run to the building to find the address. No doubt, some patients have died before the ambulance could locate them.

The EMTs brought written statements from coworkers and photos of the buildings and asked to speak to an NYCHA official. They were not allowed to speak to anyone about this easily correctable health hazard, so the EMTs and Red Hook residents will paint the addresses themselves!

We don’t have the hundreds of thousands demonstrating like in Cairo’s Tahrir Square…yet. But Egypt shows that things can change quickly. Fighting against racist health cuts and building unity between workers and patients; expanding the circulation of CHALLENGE; deepening our personal/political relationships is the only way to guarantee that when things do change, we will be able to determine the direction and outcome of that struggle with a mass revolutionary communist PLP.