NYS Gov. Kathy Hochul Sparks 1199SEIU Revolt After Cutting Healthcare and Banking Billions in Reserves

Members of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East are led away in handcuffs after protesting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s draconian budget cuts. Photos courtesy of 1199

By Bob Hennelly

A growing coalition of labor, faith-based, and advocacy non-profits supporting seniors, the disabled and New York’s low-income households are turning up the pressure on Albany this week to resist the draconian healthcare budget cuts proposed by Gov. Kathleen Hochul.

The full court press comes just before the Biden administration is set to announce on May 11 the formal end of the federal health emergency that was declared with the onset of the COVID pandemic, which has gone on to kill 1.1 million Americans — including 77,000 New Yorkers, several thousand of whom died in its nursing homes.

As a consequence of the federal stand down, close to 15 million Americans, including one million New Yorkers, will lose their Medicaid coverage, swelling the ranks of the state’s uninsured — and placing additional stress on safety net hospitals already under-resourced.

According to an investigation by the Guardian Newspapers and Kaiser Health News, 453 New York State healthcare workers died in the first wave of the COVID pandemic which came amidst a national shortage of N-95 masks. In New Jersey, 268 perished. Nationally, over 3,600 healthcare workers perished in the first year of the pandemic. Close to two-thirds of them were people of color.

Gov. Hochul’s “proposed 5 percent Medicaid rate increase is entirely offset by the elimination of savings from the 340b drug program drug pricing program and the cut to the Indigent Care Pool,” according to a fact sheet being circulated by 1199SEIU, which is leading the resistance effort. “The budget includes cuts of $700 million from safety net hospitals, reverses course on a major victory won last year raising the pay of homecare workers to $3 above the minimum wage….and fails to provide adequate funding to nursing homes as they struggle to recruit and retain staff to comply with nursing home reform laws.”

RAINY DAY

In Gov. Hochul’s Feb. 1 address introducing her proposed $227 billion budget, she emphasized public safety, criminal justice reform and investing in “communities under siege from gun violence,” as well as the importance of building up the state’s financial reserves.

“When I took office, our reserves were a mere 4 percent, a dangerously low level for a state our size,” Hochul said. “That's why I reversed the course that our state was on and put aside a significant amount of money for a rainy day with a plan with the Legislature to increase our reserves to at least 15 percent. By the end of Fiscal Year 2023, our reserves will total nearly $24 billion because of that discipline.”

1199SEIU members stopped traffic outside of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Manhattan offices on March 29.

Hochul did rhetorically address healthcare in her speech saying “if anything, that pandemic told us and taught us how critically important it is for people to have access to good quality health care. And it shined a glaring light on the disparities that have existed long before in our health care system.”

She continued. “Last year, we made the largest investment, again, in history — you hear that a lot, but it's true — largest investment in health care in the state's history. But as we continue to recover from the aftermath of the pandemic and other challenges, we're doubling down and investing an additional $1 billion to address health care needs, and that's to make sure that we're prepared for future public health emergencies, but also $500 million to invest in transformative capital funding, help our hospitals, while being laser focused on underserved communities where the health outcomes are the poorest.”

Last month, 15,000 members of 1199SEIU converged on the state capital packing the MVP Arena at a high energy rally that was headlined by legendary rapper Doug E. Fresh. The record producer and beatbox pioneer acted as the emcee for a program that included remarks from Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, and state Attorney General Letitia James.

Several days later on March 29, several hundred unions members and their supporters marched to Gov. Hochul’s Third Avenue offices in New York City behind a horse-drawn glass hearse and a New Orleans style jazz funeral band. That event culminated in 1199SEIU President George Gresham and 25 other activists getting arrested for civil disobedience.

INVOKING DR. KING

“In the spirit of Dr. King, who recognized that injustice in healthcare is the most ‘shocking and inhumane’ form of inequality, we are prepared to put our bodies on the line to protect access to healthcare in New York,” Gresham said.  “Cutting funding to safety-net hospitals, reducing wages of low-income homecare workers, and failing to close the Medicaid coverage gap would be disastrous for our healthcare system still reeling from three years of the pandemic. We need Governor Hochul to recognize the gravity of New York’s healthcare crisis and the life-and-death issues at stake.”

1199SEIU’s act of civil disobedience came after thousands of union members packed the MVP Arena in Albany.

Earlier this month, thousands of 1199SEIU members across New York State used their lunch breaks at hospitals and nursing homes to bang pots and pans to raise the profile on the stakes of the healthcare funding battle in Albany.

On April 12, hundreds of union members, healthcare activists, as well as an ecumenical group of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic faith leaders, converged on the State Capitol’s Million Dollar Staircase to demand a $2.5 billion in healthcare in the upcoming budget. Specifically, they want to see a an increase in Medicaid reimbursement by 10 percent, 20 percent for nursing homes, and the restoration of hundreds of millions to safety-net hospital funding.

The coalition is also looking to protect gains made for home care workers when Gov. Hochul signed the Fair Pay for Home Care Act, which committed to raising the state’s minimum wage economy-wide to $21.25 by 2027, and indexing home care workers’ hourly compensation to 150 percent of the minimum wage.

The packed Capitol gathering had the high energy of a late-October campaign rally.

Rev. Dr. Willian Barber, who addressed the large crowd remotely, took Gov. Hochul to task for maintaining an $8.7 billion “surplus for a rainy day”. 

“It’s raining now — 330,000 people died during the pandemic from the lack of healthcare,” Rev. Barber said. “It’s raining now — 87 million people don’t have healthcare or are under-insured. It’s raining now — the surplus does not belong to the politicians. It doesn’t belong to the corporations. It belongs to the people — and we are the people.”

Barber challenged elected leaders who run on platforms promising affordable healthcare but don’t follow through. “What happens to them from the campaign to when they get elected? Whatever it is, we are going to change their minds,” he said.

“Working people do all the work — we create all the wealth,” said Mark Emanation, Capital District Area Labor Federation AFL-CIO director. “The wealthy steal it from us. So, the money they steal from us they use to buy the people in this building to do their bidding; we have to have them do our bidding.”

“A coalition of older adults, disabled, family caregivers and home care workers have come together in what’s called the New York Caring Majority which we hope will lift up home care workers who do such essential life sustaining work,” group organizer Bobbie Sackman said during a phone interview. “We are calling on Gov. Hochul to support a state budget that does not roll back the wage gains these workers made above the minimum wage that has, unfortunately, gone into the pockets of the insurance companies and not the agencies nor the workers that do this essential work. On our current course, we could end up with fewer home care workers and providers in a state that already has the biggest shortage of such services.”

BIG PICTURE

State Senator Jessica Ramos (D-D13) is the chair of the Senate’s Labor Committee and one of the leading proponents for raising the minimum wage. During a phone interview, Ramos said she ran on a platform supporting the New York Health Act, a single payer model, because she believes health care is a basic human right.

“Healthcare is becoming increasingly expensive because we continue to think that we’re going to have a system that commodifies health care when it is not a commodity at all,” Ramos said. “Actually, coming out of the pandemic, more than ever before, we should understand that it actually matters if the person next to us on the bus is coughing and sneezing that they have the ability to see an appropriate doctor when they can.”

Ramos continued, “And we all know that medical debt, right up there with student debt, is a huge hindrance to families entering the middle class. We have to have a big reassessment of our economy to figure it all out, including our care economy which is definitely our future. More people than ever before are seeking care. We keep fighting these fights and trying to figure out Band-Aids that don’t necessarily correlate with people’s needs. It’s unfortunate we continue to put profits over people.”