1199 Going After Legislators
The groups opposing Eliot Spitzer's health care plan are now using the governor's approach to negotiating: publicly shame your local lawmaker. (Remember Spitzer's trip to Syracuse?)
1199 and the Greater New York Hospital Association sent this personalized mailing to Queens residents, asking them to "Call State Senator George Onorato and ask him to oppose $2.6 million in Gov. Spitzer's healthcare cuts to our district."
It's a shift -- or at least a distinct course of action -- from their television campaign, which is designed to affect public opinion by featuring nurses calling out Spitzer by name.
UPDATE: That was the stick mailing. Here's the carrot.
-- Azi Paybarah
Very interesting...looks like 1199 is changing tactics. Maybe they realize there only hope is effecting the legislature.
in bklyn, i also got a mailing. more general though, not encouraging calls to legislators. but, there were pull off postcards - one to spitzer and the other to senator adams and assemblymember jefferies.
Changing tactics? Doesn't 1199 already "own" the Assembly? If anything, it looks like they're working to make sure they have enough support in the Senate when the time comes.
Spitzer needs to hold a presser on the steps of City Hall, keep working the bully pulpit, keep leveraging the public support he has and, most of all, work the Senate Dems. The Healthcare Project's refusal to accept a $1 billion reduction out of a budget of $46 billion is just unacceptable. Is there no way to find cost efficiencies while rooting out fraud and waste?
Azi, do a little research! 1199 does this every budget cycle. Target the Gov on TV and legislature through field and mail. It is kind of hard to do it the other way around...it is not brain surgery.
just think if 1199 spent all that money on benefits for their members instead
So when do Spitzer's flyers arrive in the boxes of parents in Republican State Senate districts, telling them that the legislator has cheated their children by trading away a fair share of state school aid for wasteful Medicaid spending for campaign contributors?
It can quote Joe Bruno vowing to oppose the cuts -- and make the school aid formula less beneficial to New York City, even though the city would STILL be worse off that if there were NO state school aid under Spitzer's proposal.
Tired Taxpayer, Governor Spitzer's proposed budget says nothing about rooting out waste and fraud. Stop buying in to the rhetoric that Spitzer is any sort of real reformer. He is a ridiculous bully who is spewing the same tired rhetoric over and over again because he doesn't have a real plan to really make Medicaid more efficient, less wasteful, and less fraudulent. Look into what he has said about the health care budget cuts--it is all buzz words and very little substance. He seems more keen on humiliating 1199/GNYHA and winning points than in effecting REAL change that would in any way make you a less-tired taxpayer.
Not steamrolled is Dead Right!!!. All that has been said is correct. 11:48 is wrong. Dead Wrong!!!!!. 1199 has great benefits. Trust me, they have most if not all of the private hospitals in NY. Their members get great care--Hence the Budget fight.
"Not Steamrolled" is clearly some 1199 apparatchick, maybe Jennifer Cunningham herself. All anyone needs to know is that 1199/GNYHA are most certainly against reforms of any kind unless they involve more money for union hacks and additional compensation for hospital executives. Spitzer is absolutely right in this fight. The union is beginning to sound like all of those corrupt Wall Streeters Spitzer took care of as attorney general -- it is a shame he didn't have time to investigate and, possibly prosecute, officials of the 1199 when he had the chance. Maybe Cuomo will.
12:38 you have the right name as a TIRED Tax Payer. You are most certainly TIRED!! At least you know the truth about yourself. If Not STeamRolled is Cunningham then you are the Gov. Cunningham doesn't have time for nonsense. She's too busy dealing with professionals.
It seems Albany spends an awful lot of time talking about lobbyists, all of the lobbyists combined don't have the power that the monster 1199/GNYHA has. They are the real bad guys. In order to get what they want, they threaten legislators with withholding support or supporting people to run against them. God forbid a legislator had an independent thought or didn't support 1199's agenda. OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
Lets cancel all elections and let 1199 and the lobbyists continue to run government
My daily question to 1199/GNYHA - What are NY taxpayers getting that Californian's don't for the two times per capita we spend on Medicaid?
From what I can see, it is a lot of new buildings on York Ave and more money for hospital execs. I'd like to kow what patients and the millions of uninsured in NY are getting out of the current system.
Let's face it. The Gov lost this one. His tact (lack of) was all wrong. Two months in and he's angered the legislature, health care workers, teachers, business leaders, congress, and even the Mayor of NYC. He can't help himself. In the end, he'll be the only tackled body on his imaginary rugby field.
Give us a break, 4 loooonnngg years. This is the first quarter of the first year of Spitzer's administration. I think he'll be OK.
I think it makes more sense for 1199/NYHA to co-opt Spitzer by conceding that at least some cuts - maybe not the $1 billion but a large portion of it - can be sustained through attrition or by eliminating redundancy and waste. Isn't it possible to absorb these cuts without closing hospitals or laying off healthcare workers? Of course...Why can't they take the initiative and put themselves into a more positive position? Instead they look like a greedy special interest group interested only in getting more and more money, taxpayers be damned. I want quality healthcare like everyone else, but the rate of Medicaid growth is wholly unsustainable over the long term and besides, its the most expensive system in the U.S. WHAT ARE TAXPAYERS GETTING FOR THIS ENORMOUS EXPENDITURE OF THE PUBLIC FISC?
Tired Taxpayer - Agree with virtually everything you said.
1199/GNYHA are the same people who hijacked the money from the Empire Blue Cross conversion for their own purposes rather than coverage for the uninsured.
It should also be noted that 1199/GNYHA worked hard behind the scenes to defeat the Clinton health proposal in 1994 b/c it included Graduate Medical Education cuts. Flawed as that proposal might have been, we wouldn't have 45+ million uninsured in this country if it had been enacted.
See a pattern???
It's silly to argue this issue on the merits. The guy just brought together the Republicans and the Democrats. Laughable. It's become a pissing match. Gov is trying to steamroll 3 important players. Rather than get his macho up, he should have negotiated. He might have beat one of them, but he can't beat all 3.
mr steamroller should flatten the insurance, and drug companies. he also needs to monitor the high payed walk arounds that run the hospitals.i am a single working parent,trying to make ends meet in the land of high taxes(long island). i am also a nurse. i can honestly say i have not become rich from prior budgets that passed.