Are New Yorks Hospitals Really About to Collapse?
In their advocacy for renewal or expansion of these HCRA surcharges, the hospital interests have rejected even a gradual phase-out or reform of the program. Their arguments are one part scorched earth, one part Chicken Little. Hospitals are vital, important and respected institutions in New York, but you would never know it from the cacophony. Hospital unions have mounted overtly political campaigns vowing electoral vengeance against Governor Pataki or any other elected official who shows any willingness to rethink even part of these “temporary” taxes. They make not-so-veiled threats of consumer boycotts or other actions against any employer who wishes out loud for lower health-care costs. The hospital lobbies, meanwhile, issue one round after another of proclamations that the sky is falling and New York hospitals are doomed. Their most flamboyant rhetorician, Kenneth Raske of the Greater New York Hospital Association, has an unbroken 10-year-record of predicting disaster at every turn
