New York, NY, March 8, 2010…The GNYHA/1199 SEIU Healthcare Education Project said today that the $1 billion in proposed health care cuts in the New York State budget would eliminate more than 22,000 jobs statewide. Hospitals, nursing homes, and home care agencies alone would suffer 12,300 permanent job losses, gravely threatening access to care in communities across New York. By any measure, quality patient care would be severely jeopardized.

To ensure that New Yorkers—and their legislators in Albany—understand the destructive effect the health care cuts would have on patients and communities, GNYHA and 1199 will roll out a television ad tomorrow explaining that health care has been cut seven times since 2007 with an eighth cut looming, that health care access is disappearing as a result, and that New Yorkers must tell their State legislators, “NO MORE HEALTH CARE CUTS, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.” The ad will be seen on TV stations across the entire state for the next two weeks. A video file and script of the ad are attached.

1199 SEIU and GNYHA will also conduct thousands of patch-through calls to legislators so New Yorkers can voice their opposition to another round of damaging health care cuts.

In a joint statement, GNYHA president Kenneth E. Raske and 1199 SEIU president George Gresham said:

“Because of the very real possibility that legislators will choose once again to weaken health care in New York by slashing funding for the eighth time in three years, we have no choice but to make sure their constituents know it. It is astonishing that health care is still on the chopping block after seven previous cuts, multiple facility closures, and the loss of thousands of health care jobs. A budget deficit is not a mandate to decimate health care, and further cuts will trigger more than 12,000 additional layoffs, sharp reductions in care, and outright closures. Enough is enough.”

Separate from the severe damage more health care cuts will cause, GNYHA and 1199 SEIU maintain that they are entirely unnecessary from a budget deficit standpoint because New York is scheduled to receive nearly $1.5 billion in Federal Medicaid relief.

The loss of 12,300 health care jobs would come on the heels of thousands of job losses from recent layoffs at St. Vincent’s Manhattan Hospital and the closures since 2008 of Victory Memorial Hospital, Cabrini Medical Center, Parkway Hospital, Caritas Healthcare (St. John’s Queens Hospital, Mary Immaculate Hospital, Msgr. Fitzpatrick Nursing Home) and the Taylor Care Center.

GNYHA used the Impact Analysis for Planning (IMPLAN) model to estimate the direct job loss from the proposed health care budget cuts and their multiplier effect. IMPLAN is a micro-computer-based input-output modeling system that can estimate the effect of a change in local spending—in this case, a reduction in Medicaid spending—on total economic output, employment, and State and Federal tax receipts in the same locality or any other area in the United States (see www.implan.com for more details).

GNYHA and 1199 SEIU urge the New York State Legislature to take all necessary steps to protect and defend health care for all New Yorkers.