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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Judy Wessler, Healthcare Advocate from Commission on the Public Health System
2:06:19
·
4 min
Judy Wessler, a healthcare advocate, commends the council members and Dr. Katz for their work while expressing concerns about potential disastrous changes in healthcare funding. She proposes reviewing affiliation contracts between H&H and private hospitals, particularly NYU Langone, to ensure resources are used efficiently for public health services.
- Suggests reconsidering tax exemptions for private hospitals and redirecting funds to public health services
- Highlights the need to prevent loss of access to care, especially with potential Medicaid cuts
- Emphasizes the importance of ensuring H&H facilities have necessary resources to serve communities effectively
Judy Wessler
2:06:19
Thank you so much.
2:06:20
And, I just wanna compliment council members for their excellent questions and I was pleasantly surprised.
2:06:28
I thought Doctor Katz did a great job too.
2:06:31
So, it's glad, you know, it's good to see the sort of synergy and working together.
2:06:38
We do have some proposals that are not necessarily on everybody's table and think that there should be Because there happened this morning in congress and and you know the kinds of things that we could be facing could be really disastrous things disastrous and we can't go back that far.
2:07:07
You know, we've been there in the past.
2:07:09
We can't go back that far.
2:07:11
So some of the ideas are that the affiliation contracts that H and H, and I still call it HHC, has with Mount Sinai but particularly NYU Langone which has three different institutional affiliations, that they need to really be reviewed and to see if they are necessary because there are costs associated, that go outside of the public system and, we need to really think about that and figure it.
2:07:54
And I don't know if, people have seen it but NYU Langone, they had the highest salaries and compensations of any institution in New York City.
2:08:09
And, you know, and they also had a what we call a profit, they call surplus or excess revenue on a three month basis, 300,000,000.
2:08:25
So looking at that and looking at the potential of, you know, all of these institutions get tax exemptions.
2:08:39
And so should the city be doing that?
2:08:43
Should those funds that come in or should there be funds coming in and should they be used for public health and public hospital services?
2:08:55
And we have a proposal, a little written proposal that we can work on more about that.
2:09:02
But what we need to do and I believe that certainly the council members that I'm looking at and the staff and others that we know would agree with this, that we can't go back and and, you know, not have access to care, and and have all sorts of and we know that the private hospitals are gonna be referring to the public, when Medicaid doesn't pay as much and when people lose their their insurance coverage.
2:09:36
You know, I had a student that, a high school student that went around and looked at the policies of some of these private hospitals and in the emergency room at NYU Langone, there was a handwritten note which unfortunately wasn't smart enough to take a picture of but if you don't have health insurance go down the block to Bellevue.
2:10:00
I mean, you know, the clearest message in writing.
2:10:04
They don't usually put it in writing but this was in writing.
2:10:09
And so we need to think strategically about ways to make sure that our facilities, our H and H facilities have the resources needed to take care of people and be in the communities.
2:10:28
And we look forward to working with you on these.
2:10:31
Thank you.