Hospital upgrades should improve care for all
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Manhattan: Elected officials from across Manhattan celebrated the state Health Department’s rejection of the plan to close Mount Sinai Beth Israel medical center as yet another example of a large health care company failing to address the severe shortage of hospital beds and quality medical care in underserved communities across the city. As part of the Upper East Side community, I have protested Northwell’s plan for the massive expansion of Lenox Hill Hospital. That expansion and the closure of Beth Israel and other borough hospitals are part of the same problem: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Hospitals like Beth Israel (photo) do not have the revenue to survive when they are serving largely Medicare, Medicaid, and uninsured patients. Meanwhile, Northwell wants to transform Lenox Hill into single-occupancy suites, which would draw any remaining privately insured patients from other underserved areas.
In the case of Beth Israel, we can’t expect Mount Sinai to lose huge sums on the hospital, but that’s why New York’s private health care networks should work with the state Health Department to build hospitals with all communities in mind, not just the richest. These large health care systems, which are supposed to be nonprofit, frequently are corporate-minded, not civic-minded.
Northwell’s efforts on the Upper East Side are the next front in the fight against the private health care networks creating a two-tiered health care system in this city. It is time to put an end to Northwell’s current plans for Lenox Hill Hospital and tell them to come back with a plan that makes sense for our community and the rest of the city.
Ann Goodbody member, Committee to Protect Our Lenox Hill Neighborhood
A 19-year-old dad-to-be was fatally shot by his aunt’s obsessed ex-boyfriend when he got in between a domestic spat in an East Harlem apartment, the devastated woman told the Daily News on Thursday.
Ramon Alvarez was inside his apartment on E. 112th St. near Third Ave. — part of NYCHA’s Jefferson Houses — around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday when his aunt’s ex pushed his way into the home.
“He took out his gun and he shot, pow, pow,” said Melidy Adega, 38. “[Alvarez] was getting up from sleep when he heard the commotion.”
As the man aimlessly fired the gun, Alvarez rushed into the room to see what was going on.
“He shot my nephew first,” said Adega. “He was shooting in the dark.”
The man then turned and pointed the gun at Adega’s face, but the woman grabbed the barrel before he could fire off a shot, she recalled. She was grazed in the shoulder.
When medics arrived at the scene, Alvarez was conscious and talking.
“They were banging on my door telling me someone had been shot,” said neighbor Angel Rivera, 64. “EMTs brought him out on the stretcher.”
He was taken to Harlem Hospital, where he took a turn for the worse and died, police said.
Adega and the gunman had been dating on and off for about four years before she recently ended the “abusive” relationship.
“He’d come over and he started acting violent,” Adega claimed of the shooter. “When he said he was going to kill me, I never took it seriously.”
The gunman sped off on a bicycle, ditching the gun as he made his escape, officials said.
Alvarez’s apartment remained a crime scene Thursday night. Neighbors told The News he lived there with his family.
The young man and his girlfriend were expecting a baby boy next month and planned to celebrate the arrival at a shower scheduled for this weekend.
“She’s devastated,” Adega said of the victim’s girlfriend. “That’s their first child, and he’ll never even see the birth.”
The slain man was working for the city’s Department of Parks & Recreation and working to get his GED, according to the mother-tobe’s brother.
“He was going to be a great dad,” Dorian Lawrence said. “We’re all very hurt.
“I’m at a loss for words.”
On Thursday, police arrested the 53-yearold gunman in the Bronx. Charges against him were pending as of the evening.
He has 27 prior arrests, 17 of which are felonies, according to police sources.