Nurses’ hosp RxAP
Cut NYPD funds, tax rich to aid poor: union
The state nurses union wants New York to divert money away from the NYPD to help address racial disparities in health care at hospitals that primarily serve the city’s poorest patients.
The New York State Nurses Association, which represents 42,000 nurses, is also calling on the state government to increase the tax rate on the ultrawealthy and to create a tax on second and third homes to better fund public and safety-net hospitals.
The call for increased funding — outlined in an internal memo obtained by the Daily News — is in response to statistics that show black and Hispanic patients typically fare worse when it comes to health care outcomes in general and with coronavirus specifically.
“The working class and the middle class and the poor are getting shafted,” association President Judy SheridanGonzalez said.
That, she said, is apparent in the care they get at the hospitals that serve them — safety-net hospitals like Montefiore in the Bronx, where she works, and the city’s public hospitals like Bellevue in Manhattan.
The level of care is dependent on staff being trained properly, on having enough staff and on having enough space to properly accommodate patients — and on those fronts, says Sheridan-Gonzalez, the hospitals that serve mostly poor and mostly black and brown patients are severely lacking.
“What’s really important is training and staffing and space,” she said. “You can’t have people on stretchers in a hallway on [a] patient care unit and not give them a room — especially when you’re dealing with an infectious disease.”
To fix that, the nurses association is pushing for increased funding on two fronts — diverting $2 billion from jails, prosecutors’ offices and the NYPD to hospitals, and generating more than $30 billion in new revenue through taxing the rich. The demands come as city and state policymakers are facing down gaping revenue shortfalls brought on by the coronavirus crisis.
“At a time when the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has led to protests across the U.S. against police violence, spurring demands to address discrimination against African- and Hispanic-Americans and for equality in health care, the economy and in the administration of justice, nurses of the New York State Nurses Association are calling for an end to the ‘death gap’ for African and Hispanic New Yorkers who are dying at twice the rate of whites,” an internal association memo states.
The memo cites city Health Department data showing whites died from COVID-19 at a rate of 109.95 per 100,000, while AfricanAmericans died at a rate of 219.99 per 100,000 and Hispanics at 236.56 per 100,000.
Roxanna Garcia, an RN at Woodhull Medical Center in Brooklyn, said such disparities were apparent long before COVID-19 ravaged the five boroughs, but that now is the time to begin addressing them.
“The house has burned down,” she said. “Let’s rebuild the house the right way.”
One way to do that is through creating a singlepayer health care system, which would have to happen on the federal level. Barring that, raising more money for hospitals on the city and state levels is what’s needed, according to the union leaders.
But that could be a tough lift due to the fiscal crisis caused by COVID-19.
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Gov. Cuomo, suggested that the state will not be able to do it on its own.
“The federal government must come through and pass a real legislative package for state and local governments,” he said. “We fund teachers, we fund firefighters, we fund paramedics, and yes, we fund nurses and other hero health care professionals on the front line, and we can’t do that without this relief, nor can we chart a fiscal path forward.”
Avery Cohen, a spokeswoman for Mayor de Blasio, did not address potentially diverting funds from the NYPD to hospitals, but said the city is “putting equity at the forefront of our recovery effort and delivering care to the communities that need it most.”
“As we emerge from the pandemic and reckon with the disproportionate impact the virus has had on communities of color, NYC Health + Hospitals’ mission to provide quality, affordable health care to every New Yorker — regardless of their immigration status or ability to pay — has never been more critical,” she said.