PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Ben Wetzler, Resident of Stuyvesant Town, on Keeping Mount Sinai Beth Israel Open
3:56:09
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109 sec
Ben Wetzler, a resident of Stuyvesant Town, testifies in support of Council Member Rivera's resolution to keep Mount Sinai Beth Israel open. He emphasizes the importance of the hospital's full-service emergency room and expresses concerns about the potential closure's impact on the community's access to healthcare.
- Highlights the need for every neighborhood to have appropriately sized healthcare facilities
- Criticizes the concentration of hospital facilities in certain areas, particularly uptown
- Calls for comprehensive citywide planning for healthcare facilities to ensure equitable distribution
Ben Wetzler
3:56:09
Oh, okay.
3:56:10
Great.
3:56:10
I wasn't sure I was having some issues earlier.
3:56:13
Hi.
3:56:13
My name is Ben Wetzeler.
3:56:15
I'm a resident of Stuyvesantown, and I'm here to voice support for council member Rivera's resolution and ask the council to keep Mount Sinai Beth Israel open and to do everything that they can to make sure that that happens.
3:56:26
Our community really relies on this institution.
3:56:28
It's important.
3:56:30
It provides all number of different types of care, but most importantly, the one is the full service emergency room.
3:56:36
Without a full service emergency room, We are at risk of very long wait times for essential care that our neighbors can't afford.
3:56:44
They've told us that the approval of the closure is conditional on capacity at some of the other hospitals in the neighborhood.
3:56:50
But, you know, there are a lot of problems with that, not everybody.
3:56:54
His insurance will cover the, you know, not every type of hospital.
3:56:59
They won't necessarily be able to do it, and I really just think that that is an insufficient commitment to the neighborhood and to our needs.
3:57:07
I also wanna echo what was said by some of the other speakers about concentration of hospital facilities in different neighborhoods, notably the ones uptown, I grew up on the upper east side.
3:57:18
I was born at Lenox Hill Hospital.
3:57:20
My parents have had a lot of lifesaving care there.
3:57:22
I think that those facilities are very important, and they're valuable to the community.
3:57:26
But every neighborhood needs one of those.
3:57:28
We shouldn't just have all of them being pushed into the same neighborhood.
3:57:32
It's very disconcerting that some of the people talked about earlier.
3:57:36
1,000,000,000 of dollars are potentially being invested into a new facility on the upper east side while Beth Israel is at risk of closing.
3:57:42
So I definitely am glad to hear that the council is talking about comprehensive citywide planning for these types of facilities.
3:57:48
I wanna make sure that we ensure that every neighborhood has an appropriately sized facility that's meeting its needs, and I hope that you'll ask porting you will act accordingly and support the resolution.
3:57:58
Thank you.
