Class War Needed vs. Racist Bosses’ Hospital Closings

Brooklyn , NY, February 8 — “Healthcare, Not Profit Care!” rang out in downtown Brooklyn as around 100 nurses and other hospital workers picketed demanding that Long Island College Hospital (LICH) and Interfaith Hospitals remain open. The day before, hundreds of nurses, patients, doctors and community people had angrily confronted the State University of New York (SUNY) Board of Trustees to fight the closing of LICH.  At the end of the demonstration word came down that the Trustees had just voted to close LICH. Hearing this, picketers chanted even louder.
Those who read CHALLENGE regularly may know that about a year and a half ago, SUNY Downstate, a state hospital in Brooklyn, took over the failing LICH, setting up a private corporation called Stafco to employ workers there so they could not get state benefits. Six months later, sometime-hedge fund mogul, Stephen Berger, heading up New York Governor Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team, suggested that Downstate campus close and be consolidated into LICH. Workers have been fighting since then to save Downstate, which sees 400,000 patients a year, including 40,000 Emergency Room (ER) visits.
In the last month, Downstate president John Williams, backed by Berger and State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, suddenly announced plans to close LICH instead, whose ER sees 50,000 patients per year. Most of its inpatients are black and Latino with hardly any medical insurance. Overall, the closure could start by closing the ER within days.
Some workers at Downstate mistakenly think the closing of LICH is a victory in our fight to keep Downstate open. Some workers at LICH mistakenly argue that Downstate should be the one to close.  A large Manhattan health enterprise called Continuum bled LICH dry for 15 years and then was ready to close it. They should be fighting together — against the bosses — for more and better healthcare and jobs, not less and worse.
But since Downstate seemed to be doing alright until it took over LICH and its debts, it appears that shedding LICH is the solution. This is so especially since Continuum continues to profit by keeping a stranglehold on LICH’s billing and laboratories.
Increasingly hospitals are being squeezed by changes in reimbursement and loss of government support for care of workers without health insurance or the means to pay.  These cuts stem directly from the massive investment the U. S. bosses make in war in the Middle East. The Affordable Care Act may make things even worse. That is why Mount Sinai has opened an outpatient facility in affluent Brooklyn Heights (near LICH) siphoning off patients (stealing market share). Inner-city hospitals in particular, because they rely on Medicaid and Medicare payments are faring the worst. The bosses have basically decided to let these hospitals sink or swim. When they sink because of racism, black and Latino workers who already have the worst health will suffer disproportionately.
We hospital workers and patients should not accept the Berger/Williams/Cuomo  capitalist “reality.” All of us should unite to fight the closing of LICH, Interfaith, Downstate and any other safety-net hospital. The Cuomo plan for Brooklyn will mean that people having asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes in Red Hook and other LICH-served areas will have to be taken much further for emergency care — life or death!
Cuomo/Berger/Williams are  declaring war on the health of the Brooklyn working class. We should be on a war footing in our struggle against them. Business-as-usual that our union leaders offer is not enough. We are fighting to have strikes, sit-downs, occupations, led by workers and patients as part of our fight-back plan. The struggles continues.