More than 1,000 protest proposed health-care cuts
More than 1,000 health-care workers who traveled to the Capitol Thursday to protest the governor’s proposed $278 million in health-care reductions.
“We simply cannot sustain any more cuts in our hospitals, in our nursing homes or in our home-care division. Today we’ve got to make it clear: No more health-care cuts. Enough is enough!” said Kevin Finnegan, political director for 1199 SEIU health-care workers union.
The proposed $278 million in Medicaid cuts would cause the state to lose a total of $747 million because New York would lose matching funds from the federal government, according to the Healthcare Association of New York State. In the past 18 months, four separate budget actions that reduced funding to health-care providers by a total of $3.87 billion, the group said.
“You know what’s unbelieveable? In the last five years, their cuts shuttered 19 hospitals, 30 nursing homes,” Daniel Sisto, president of the organization, said. “We’ve got words for that. Enough is enough, no more cuts,” he said, getting members of the crowd to chant along with him.
Liz Richardson of Poughkeepsie, a perinatal technician at Vassar Brothers Medical Center, said health-care workers worry every day about what could potentially happen to the institutions where they work and their own jobs.
“Every year or so, he’s (Paterson’s) coming out with more cuts and more cuts and more cuts. We can’t afford anymore of the cuts,” said Richardson, 55, who has worked at the hospital for 35 years.
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