HHC deep in the hole

From the Daily News:

The city's cash-strapped public hospital system will have to bring in hundreds of thousands more patients to overcome its dire financial troubles, Health and Hospitals Corp. President Ram Raju said Tuesday.

In a speech to hundreds of hospital workers, Raju pledged to increase the number of patients using the system’s 11 hospitals and other facilities to 2 million annually by 2020 from the current 1.4 million. And he said the hospitals corporation would double the number of people enrolled in its MetroPlus health insurance plan to 1 million during the same period.

The hospital system has been bleeding cash for years, and faces a $753 million deficit next year, which will balloon to $1.5 billion by 2019.

And because of Obamacare, the agency faces deep cuts to federal aid traditionally funneled to hospitals that care for large numbers of uninsured patients. Under that law, the Health and Hospitals Corp. expects to lose $180 million in 2017, and a total of $3 billion by 2024.

At the same time, hospital officials expect they’ll still have to care for many people who can’t get insurance despite Obamacare, particularly undocumented immigrants.

Bringing in more patients who have insurance or can pay for care will help offset those cuts, Raju said.

Schumer says ObamaCare was the wrong priority

From Forbes:

Despite the enduring unpopularity of Obamacare, Congressional Democrats have up to now stood by their health care law, allowing that “it’s not perfect” but that they are proud of their votes to pass it. That all changed on Tuesday, when the Senate’s third-highest-ranking Democrat—New York’s Chuck Schumer—declared that “we took [the public’s] mandate and put all our focus on the wrong problem—health care reform…When Democrats focused on health care, the average middle-class person thought, ‘The Democrats aren’t paying enough attention to me.’”

Sen. Schumer made his remarks at the National Press Club in Washington. “Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them…Now, the plight of uninsured Americans and the hardships caused by unfair insurance company practices certainly needed to be addressed,” Schumer maintained. “But it wasn’t the change we were hired to make. Americans were crying out for the end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs—not changes in health care.”

“This makes sense,” Schumer continued, “considering 85 percent of all Americans got their health care from either the government, Medicare, Medicaid, or their employer. And if health care costs were going up, it really did not affect them. The Affordable Care Act was aimed at the 36 million Americans who were not covered. It has been reported that only a third of the uninsured are even registered to vote…it made no political sense.”

Bloomberg misdeed undone by Stringer

From the Daily News:

The company fired by the feds for the botched rollout of the Obamacare website has been “fired” again — the time by the New York City controller.

Controller Scott Stringer’s office refused Tuesday to approve a contract awarded by the Bloomberg administration to the Montreal-based firm CGI to overhaul the city’s 311 information hotline.

The Daily News reported that the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, known as DoITT, approved the contract hours before Mayor de Blasio took office, and that rival companies questioned CGI’s qualifications to do the work.

Sources said the controller’s office had questions about the planning and scope of the project and was concerned that the cost could balloon to as much as ten times the original $10 million pricetag.

An additional concern, sources said, was that the outgoing administration pushed through the contract on its final hours, denying de Blasio a say in the 311 overhaul.

In a letter Tuesday, Deputy Controller Lisa Flores said that if the new administration decides to go through with the project, it should request additional companies to bid on the work.

Bloomberg's final act as mayor was a doozy

From the Daily News:

In one of its final acts, the Bloomberg administration pushed through a costly contract to modernize the city's 311 call system — hiring the same company fired by the feds for the botched rollout of the Obamacare website.

The city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, known as DoITT, awarded the contract to the Montreal-based company CGI on Dec. 31, hours before Bill de Blasio was sworn in as mayor.

Bloomberg administration officials were keen on approving the deal because the former mayor sees the 311 hotline as one his legacies, sources said.

But rival companies are up in arms, saying CGI has little if any experience managing call centers. A website, Dont911nyc311.com, has popped up to protest the contract.

CGI has never overhauled “a 311-type system,” said a source in the information technology industry.

From CBS Local:

A contract awarded to a Montreal-Based CGI on December 31, has caught the eye of City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

“I’m certainly reviewing the contract now,” Stringer told WCBS 880′s Jim Smith.

“This is a critical project when it comes to enhancing 311 and we’re going to be looking at all aspect of this process and contract,” Stringer said.

Stringer said that it was important to make sure that the company does what it said it would do. CGI and the city’s IT department say the competitive bid was awarded after a rigorous evaluation process.

Our ERs stink

From CBS New York:

When it comes to emergency rooms, New York tied for 13th place in a state-by-state ranking Thursday.

As 1010 WINS’ Carol D’Auria reported, the average waiting time to be seen and treated in an emergency room in any part of the state is more than six hours.

The overall grade for New York is a C, D’Auria reported.

Dr. Robert Glatter, spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians said that the Affordable Care Act will likely negatively impact emergency rooms.

More hospital closings on the horizon?

From Crains:

Two events defined 2013 for New York City hospitals: the battle to keep two failing Brooklyn hospitals open, and Mount Sinai Medical Center's takeover of the former Continuum Health Partners. Closures and consolidations will again set the tone for hospitals in 2014. New York City hospitals need fewer beds—and fewer employees, too.

This isn't news to New Yorkers who have witnessed the death of St. Vincent's Hospital and other recent bankruptcies. Hospitals have been struggling with reimbursement cuts for years. But in 2014, a convergence of trends will accelerate consolidations and closings.

One trend is the way insurers are paring their network of hospitals and doctors under Obamacare. Low-priced health plans sold on the new insurance exchange are less costly because they offer a limited choice of providers, often only a quarter of the number in more traditional insurance policies. Some hospitals will find their patients steered elsewhere.

Insurers and companies that pay employee health care costs have -realized they "don't need a phone book of providers," said one hospital executive. "That is a revolution. Hospital utilization is dropping because the plan benefits are changing."

Another factor that will drive down hospitalization in 2014 is an ambitious new plan by New York state to cut the rate of avoidable hospitalizations by 25% over five years. That means shifting care from institutional settings to outpatient clinics and other alternatives.

The fall in hospital employment may begin in early 2014. Mayor Bill de Blasio may try to keep Brooklyn's money-losing Long Island College Hospital open, but the Cobble Hill facility filed a notice of mass layoffs with the state Department of Labor, specifying that 1,442 employees could lose their jobs between Jan. 21 and Feb. 3.

Likewise, bankrupt Interfaith Medical Center had been set to fire 1,545 workers late last month until the state promised funding to keep the hospital open through March 7.

Mount Sinai Health System cut 70 positions—a fraction of its 35,000 employees—shortly after its merger with Continuum, but the possibility remains that more consolidation could lie ahead.

City hospitals rejecting Obamacare

From the NY Post:

ObamaCare was supposed to offer more choices — but New Yorkers shopping for medical coverage stand to be shut out of two of the city’s most prestigious hospitals.

Only three of the nine plans being offered on the New York State Health Exchange cover bills at NYU and New York-Presbyterian medical centers, The Post has learned.

Those who opt for the other six plans will either have to go elsewhere or pay steep out-of-pocket costs, officials said.

Records show that New York-Presbyterian, the largest hospital system in the nation with 2,236 beds, is an in-network choice only for the United, Emblem and Aetna plans when chosen through the exchange.

The New York University system, which as 1,069 beds at its main Langone medical facility as well as its Hospital for Joint Diseases, has deals with Affinity, Fidelis and United, and for individuals with Oxford-United for small groups.

NYU and New York-Presbyterian continue to accept most commercial health insurance that is not regulated by ObamaCare.

Obamacare will screw every NYC taxpayer

From the NY Post:

The city’s generous health-care benefits for municipal workers might qualify as costly “Cadillac plans” that get socked with significant financial penalties under ObamaCare, Mayor Bloomberg’s budget director warned yesterday.

Councilman Jimmy Oddo (R-SI) raised the potentially explosive possibility during a routine budget hearing.

“It would mean the city would get a 40 percent excise tax,” Oddo pointed out.

When he asked Budget Director Mark Page if that was a concern, he got a one-word reply: “Yes.”

Employers who spend more than $10,200 a year on health insurance for an individual employee or $27,500 for a family would start getting penalized in 2018. The tax is aimed at prodding employers to eliminate bloated medical-insurance costs.

NY to pay more for illegal alien heath care

From the NY Times:

President Obama’s health care law is putting new strains on some of the nation’s most hard-pressed hospitals, by cutting aid they use to pay for emergency care for illegal immigrants, which they have long been required to provide.

The federal government has been spending $20 billion annually to reimburse these hospitals — most in poor urban and rural areas — for treating more than their share of the uninsured, including illegal immigrants. The health care law will eventually cut that money in half, based on the premise that fewer people will lack insurance after the law takes effect.

But the estimated 11 million people now living illegally in the United States are not covered by the health care law. Its sponsors, seeking to sidestep the contentious debate over immigration, excluded them from the law’s benefits.

As a result, so-called safety-net hospitals said the cuts would deal a severe blow to their finances.

The hospitals are coming under this pressure because many of their uninsured patients are illegal immigrants, and because their large pools of uninsured or poorly insured patients are not expected to be reduced significantly under the Affordable Care Act, even as federal aid shrinks.

In some states, including New York, hospitals caring for illegal immigrants in life-threatening situations can seek payment case by case, from a program known as emergency Medicaid. But the program has many restrictions and will not make up for the cuts in the $20 billion pool, hospital executives said.

Don't you find it interesting that Bloomberg, Cuomo, Gillibrand and Schumer have not mentioned one word about NY City & State taxpayers being forced to shoulder the burden of paying for this?