Paterson Speaks Truth
New York Academy of Medicine’s Jo Ivey Boufford, Governor Paterson, and Commissioner Daines at health care address
Wednesday in a speech to media and health care advocates Wednesday, Governor David Paterson and his health care team defended his plans to reform Medicaid as long overdue.
Paterson answered questions from the media and health advocates, including representatives from Housing Works, Maimonides Hospital, the New York Academy of Medicine, William F. Ryan Community Health Network and the Community Health Network.
“What happened was, for 15 or 20 years, we resisted [changes]. We had hospitals at half the capacity. We could’ve saved the money then,” Paterson said at the event, which took place at the New York Academy of Medicine. “And the point is that we didn’t. And what happened was that it became, in many respects, institutional. Everybody was fighting to maintain their particular interests and we got into this situation.”
Although Paterson defended the $3.5 billion in cuts included in his plan as necessary to improve the quality of health care, he said that some—but not all—of the health care cuts would probably be restored by federal stimulus money. He did not say how much would be covered and said not all of the $11 billion in Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentages would go back into Medicaid spending.
Paterson said that, unlike with the education stimulus dollars, the federal government doesn’t require FMAP to go back into health care.
“We will use large portions of the FMAP money for relief in the health care system,” Paterson said. “But we want to use it wisely.”
The state hasn’t decided how much money will be allocated back to hospitals or for, that matter, anything else. The governor’s office is beginning to have meetings about that this week and are accepting “shovel-ready” proposals.
You can watch the full video of the speech from the Governor’s website
The actual truth
Paterson also responded to the nasty and expensive advertising campaign by 1199 and the New York Hospital Association. “Many of the health care organizations that don’t have $2 million to spend on television ads are supporting this process,” Paterson said.
Housing Works ran a much less expensive radio ad countering the hospitals and hospital unions’ campaign during Fred Dicker’s influential Albany radio show last week and authored an op-ed in the New York Daily News Thursday.
The unions launched a new campaign this week (see video below) stating “facts” about Paterson’s health care reforms. However, those too, are misleading and taken out of context. For example, the advertisement claims that The New York Times wrote that “hospitals could face bankruptcies, service cuts and layoffs within a matter of months.” However, the actual article quoted offered these as “among the doomsday predictions of public and private hospital executives across New York City.”
1199/GNYHA: “Fact” from Elizabeth Benjamin on Vimeo.
State Department of Health Commissioner Richard Daines, a former hospital executive, said in a question and answer with advocates after Paterson left, that the advertisements’ doomsday predictions were inaccurate. He said that the cuts would likely mean freezing executive pay and other cost-saving models—not closing emergency rooms. “That would be the last thing to go,” Daines said.
The commissioner said that the cuts are being made to encourage hospitals to change the treatments they provide and focus on preventive and outpatient care instead of inpatient procedures. “This is not a budget where everything stays the same. Rational managers change business models,” Daines said. He also said that the hospital system overall would lose less than two percent of its revenue.
Expanding care
Paterson’s health care reforms would save $2.4 billion by updating the anachronistic Medicaid reimbursement rate. $800 million would be transferred to community-based care and expanding preventative services for childhood obesity, AIDS, asthma and diabetes, which disproportionately hit poor communities.
The plan also expands some health care and eliminates barriers such as finger-imaging for Medicaid recipients that discourage people from seeking care. The plan would expand eligibility for Family Health Plus, and extend affordable health insurance to dependents.
However, even with these reforms, three million New Yorkers would remain uninsured. During the question and answer portion of the Wednesday program, National Center for Law and Economic Justice Health Policy Coordinator Denise Soffel said, “I really appreciate the need to invest in community-based care, but I also think it’s really important to invest in coverage because if people aren’t covered they can’t access the services. I’d love to know how you’ll tackle the problem of the more than 3 million New Yorkers who don’t have health insurance.”
But Paterson dodged the question. “In a deficit you can’t ask questions that include conjunctions,” he said, pausing to get the most out of his laugh line. “If we shift money, it’s because we don’t have money.” Paterson explained that there is no money to both expand health care access and coverage.
Soffel told the Update, “The state is committed to expanding public coverage and their heart is in the right place. It’s a resource question and my job as an advocate is to push them to do more.”
Posted on February 20, 2009 at 4:30 am
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