Budget Cuts Threaten New York Hospitals, Health Care Services

An estimated $7.5 billion in funding to New York state hospitals could be cut under President George W. Bush’s budget proposed last week, a decrease that many fear will jeopardize health care services for New Yorkers.

The decrease in health care funding is part of Bush’s plan to address the growing national deficit, and it includes cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, graduate medical education programs, ambulances, and other providers. The proposal will likely be met with firm resistance in Congress.

Since New York is a state with one of the highest proportion of hospitals and medical training facilities in the country, politicians and New Yorkers alike have expressed opposition.

“Year in and year out, New York hospitals and their patients depend on this funding to survive and such dramatic cuts would endanger the quality of care for years to come,” Senator Charles Schumer, D-New York, said in a statement released last week.

Others raised concerns over the cut’s impact on government-sponsored health programs. “Medicare and Medicaid make up a substantial revenue stream to hospitals, and it is general rule of thumb that all health care providers are heavily dependent on those programs for funds. If the cuts Bush has proposed go through, New York will have never seen such devastation,” said Scott Amrhein, president of the Continuing Care Leadership Coalition, an organization that represents health care providers in greater New York.

White House officials have stated that the proposed budget reductions are a fiscal responsibility, but Amrhein argued that the reductions in funding will indisputably result in poorer health care services for New Yorkers.

These cuts come at a time when the baby-boomer generation, those around 65 years of age, draw closer to retirement and will soon have more health care needs.

Bush’s proposed budget works to address fiscal problems by reducing Medicare and Medicaid funding by $101 billion over five years. Currently those programs serve 93 million people and will cost the government $564 billion this year.

But, Amrhein said, those cuts will result in greater and longer term losses in health care that outweigh budget issues.

“Hospitals are becoming an ever important resource of New York, and the worst thing to do at this point would be to chip away at them,” he said. “Bush’s proposed cuts would undermine the very foundation of New York health systems.”