Quinn's Tough Line on City Health Care
Going by Christine Quinn's speech today, she's leaning more towards the Eliot Spitzer line on health care hospital closings. than that of SEIU/1199.
She proposed creating ten new health facilities in under-served communities, but also said the following:
"There are simply too many hospital beds in New York City."
Update: In the speech, Quinn did indicate she'll oppose Spitzer's health care cut backs.Further Update: As someone pointed out to me, 1199 eventually came around to support the Berger Commission findings. -- Azi Paybarah"There are too many neighborhoods, especially in low-income and isolated areas, where you can't find a primary care doctor or a full service clinic anywhere. And it's those neighborhoods that will be most hurt by the misguided healthcare cuts being proposed in Washington and in Albany."
So .... uhm ... there are too many hospital beds, but let's create more?
She needs bloomberg dough for her future unsuccessful attempt at becoming mayor, that's why she didn't go after him in her state of the city speech.
Too many hospital beds?! If that's true and not bloombergian style number crunching which discounts the human being factor as part of the calculation, then why do people sit for hours in the ER waiting for beds?
Thank goodness for term limits, she does not represent my views.
"underserved" means there aren't enough beds in those communities. Just because there are too many overall, doesn't mean that some neighborhoods don't have enough.
more primary care facilities, less hospital beds
i am glad that quinn is speaking out on this issue. government needs to do more to encourage more primary care doctors to open offices in low income communities. one of the reasons is that doctors can charge hmo's more for the same procedure than they can medicaid. the problem is clear, the solution is not. i hope that spitzer's plan to have the state take over the child health plus program leads to substantive results.
I agree that we may not have enough hospital beds. I have been at ER's at both N. and S. Manhattan and saw how many people in emergent situations had to wait hours for a bed.
I am a New York City Police Officer and today NYPD officers were shocked in how low Speaker Christine Quinn could sink to use the Sean Bell tragedy in her State of the City speech.
The NYPD RANT blog was on overdrive with the reactions of hardworking police officers who were sickened by Speaker Quinn's lack of support for NYPD officers in her Speech
quinn was trying to be cute and is definetly running for mayor. the problem is she has not shown to have political guts.
There are simply too many hospital beds in New York City??