(In the same way that Clinton gutted welfare and
that a Kerry presidency would have succeeded in
privatizing Social Security, the new Democratic
governor of NY state seems far more capable of
slashing health care for the poor than his Republican predecessor.)
NY Times, March 3, 2007
Health Care Lobby Is Served Bagels and a Scolding From the Governor
By MICHAEL COOPER
Gov. Eliot Spitzer had two of his leading critics for breakfast yesterday.
The governor was addressing a Manhattan power
breakfast, giving a PowerPoint presentation to an
audience that included business executives, civic
leaders and former mayors, when he turned his
gaze to a table at the foot of the stage. Sitting
there listening, over plates of eggs and bagels,
were the leaders of the two health care groups
that have been using television commercials and
mailings to lead the charge against Mr. Spitzers
proposal to cut health care costs.
Suddenly a new slide popped up on the giant
screen behind Mr. Spitzer on the stage of the
Hilton New York ballroom. It said, in huge
letters, Guardians of the Status Quo, and it
bore the logos of the two groups, the Greater New
York Hospital Association and the union, 1199
S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, which
have joined forces to become one of the most powerful lobbies in Albany.
Now, my good friends at 1199 and Greater New
York, I want to put your logos up here just so
everybody will know who you are, Mr. Spitzer
began, before launching into a point-by-point
rebuttal, with 16 more slides, of their claims about his proposed cuts.
The health care officials seemed stunned
afterward. Kenneth E. Raske, the president of the
hospital association, said, I have never in my
professional life seen anything like that. And
Jennifer Cunningham, a consultant for the health
care union, said, If that was intended to try to
humiliate or discourage us from standing up
against what we see as a threat to quality health
care, it did not have that effect.
The exchange at the breakfast, given by the
Association for a Better New York, was just the
latest indication of Mr. Spitzers willingness
even eagerness to trample over the accepted
niceties and mores that have long marked state
politics. Since taking office he has complained
that the state slept like Rip van Winkle under
the reign of his predecessor, George E. Pataki;
he has helped the Democrats capture a seat in the
Republican-led Senate, and he has even traveled
to the districts of fellow Democrats in the
Assembly to criticize them for their choice of a new comptroller.
Asked later if he thought that his
take-no-prisoners, guns-blazing approach would
help him govern, Mr. Spitzer laughed. That wasnt guns going, he said.
He then noted that during two months in office he
had helped forge agreements to overhaul the
workers compensation system, confine convicted
sexual offenders after their prison terms end,
change the states budget process and strengthen its ethics laws.
But Mr. Spitzers decision to take on two of the
most powerful groups in state politics was not
without risk. The television ad campaign the
groups waged to try to restore proposed cuts
early in the Pataki administration were widely
credited with driving Mr. Patakis poll numbers
down. Now they are on the air with ads attacking Mr. Spitzer.
And as one of Mr. Spitzers slides at the
breakfast noted, the groups have $65 million in
their education fund, which can buy more ads;
they have made $22.5 million in campaign
contributions since 1999, and spent $12.7 million on lobbying since 2003.
Mr. Spitzer took issue with the health care
groups claims that Medicaid spending has been
drastically reduced in recent years, noting that
it has risen by an average of 8 percent a year,
and that the state spends more than twice the
national average on the program. Mr. Raske
countered that Medicaid spending per beneficiary
has dropped, but that costs have risen because
more people are enrolled in the program.
Mr. Spitzer also questioned the health care
groups claims that the cuts would starve
hospitals already on the brink, noting that the
cuts would have an impact of less than 1 percent
on total operating revenues, and singling out a
hospital he did not identify where the salaries
of the top eight executives were $20.1 million in 2004.
Now, is that a slash-and-burn strategy, or is
this not what I would call arthroscopic surgery? Mr. Spitzer asked.
Mr. Raske noted that 34 hospitals had closed or
become outpatient facilities in New York State
since the early 1990s, and that a state hospital
closing commission would soon whittle the number of hospitals down further.
The health care lobby is especially powerful in
the Legislature, which would have to pass Mr.
Spitzers proposed cuts for them to become law.
Lawmakers in both the Republican-led Senate and
the Democratic-led Assembly have expressed a
reluctance to cut health care this year, and they
may be even more reluctant now that lawmakers and
Governor Spitzer have agreed that the state can
expect to take in $575 million more in tax
revenues in the next fiscal year than Mr. Spitzer originally anticipated.
The back-and-forth at breakfast was the
continuation of a battle that has been waged for
more than a week with television commercials. The
health care groups have broadcast several,
leading Mr. Spitzer to counter with a $600,000
commercial featuring a group of newborns in the
hospital, with the implication that budget critics were crybabies.
The newest ad from the health care groups,
released yesterday, was a stinging response to
that ad and perhaps the most personal attack on
the governor so far. It featured a series of
nurses, in their scrubs, saying things like, I
dont understand why Governor Spitzer is
attacking me and my hospital, and, Let the
governor walk in my shoes for a day, and then call me a crybaby.
