The fight upstate for Downstate

One of New York City’s most relied-upon hospitals desperately needs more funding, reports our Katelyn Cordero, and it’s complicating already-complicated state budget negotiations.

Advocates and college officials are digging their heels in to earmark more dollars for SUNY University Hospital at Downstate, a Brooklyn safety-net provider that was the only “Covid-only” hospital in the city at the height of the pandemic. Nearly all its patients are on Medicaid or Medicare.

Though the state-operated teaching hospital has long faced chronic underfunding, this fiscal year it’s staring down a $133 million base operating deficit, driving concerns about the precarity of its services without more investment from Albany.

“I’m enraged that every year I have to yell from the rooftops to get the resources needed for this institution,” state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who represents the district Downstate serves, said in an interview.

It’s just one of SUNY’s three hospitals — along with Stony Brook University Hospital on Long Island and Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse — fighting for more help from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s executive budget proposal.

Hochul’s budget already pledged $72 million for uncompensated care at the three facilities, plus $150 million in hospital capital projects. In its budget request, though, SUNY requested $69 million to cover debt services. Although Hochul didn’t assuage that ask in her own budget framework, the funding has shown up in bills proposed last month.

Those bills would also shore up the state Department of Health’s financially distressed hospital fund, which according to the Greater New York Hospital Association would see a roughly $700 million cut under Hochul’s proposed budget.

The fund has come up a lot in this cycle’s negotiations as an answer to SUNY’s hospital funding woes. But some, such as Fred Kowal, the president of the University United Professions, are calling for more wide-ranging solutions.

“We have to turn the page; we have to undertake a long-term investment in these facilities,” he said.

IN OTHER NEWS:

— Hochul joined the chorus of Democrats vowing to push back against a Texas judge’s ruling to halt FDA approval of the abortion drug mifepristone.

In a CNN appearance Sunday, Hochul said she’s worried Republicans may be coming next for misoprostol, the drug that, taken along with mifepristone, provides the most effective two-pill regimen for terminating pregnancies.

The governor said she will be introducing legislation Monday to ensure access to the drug in New York by requiring insurance companies to cover it. “We’re trying to figure out all the different ways we can get ahead of this,” she said.

If the mifepristone ban, which the Biden administration has already rushed to appeal, goes into effect as scheduled on Friday, public hospitals and Health Department clinics in New York City will shift to misoprostol-only treatments, according to Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine.

ON THE AGENDA THIS WEEK:

— Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. — The New York City Council’s Health Committee will vote on two proposed local laws: one to create a citywide telemedicine accessibility plan, and another to ban the sale of guinea pigs in pet shops.

GOT TIPS? Send story ideas and feedback to Maya Kaufman at [email protected].

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What you may have missed

— Providers in New York state are seeing a concerning rise in streptococcal infections, with more than 430 cases reported in the first three months of 2023. That’s twice as many as over the same period in the last five years, according to the New York City Health Department.

— New Yorkers’ life expectancy dropped by almost five years during the pandemic, according to new data released by the state. The virus caused the death rate in New York City to jump to 50 percent more than the year prior, a record that also disproportionately affected communities of color. In a press release, city Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said the falling expectancy number reversed years of progress. “New Yorkers’ lifespans are falling, on top of years of relative flattening before COVID, and that cannot continue,” he said.

Another eyebrow-raising number: Overdose death rates, which saw a more than 40 percent increase from 2019.

ODDS AND ENDS

NOW WE KNOW — Though there’s no cure for gout, a specific type of probiotic might improve the symptoms.

TODAY’S TIP — Here’s what you should know about a brand of now-recalled eye drops that have caused blindness in some cases.

STUDY THIS — Gay young people are twice as likely to have sleep trouble than their straight counterparts, according to a study in the journal LGBT Health.

WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING

— Via Times Union: “3 years into COVID, health care in New York is fundamentally changed.”

— New York State Medicaid Director Amir Bassiri is trying to quell concerns over changes to how Medicaid patients will receive their medications.

— Stop using the term “superfood,” some dietitians are saying.

— Via NPR: “This doctor fought Ebola in the trenches. Now he’s got a better way to stop diseases.”

— Meet the woman who started the 1992 Supreme Court battle over the abortion pill mifepristone.

Around POLITICO

— HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said on Sunday that the Texas abortion drug ruling doesn’t represent America.

— Via POLITICO’s Dan Goldberg: 7 questions from the Texas ruling on abortion pills.

— The state agency responsible for overseeing New York’s thousands of group homes fueled the spread of the coronavirus at the onset of the pandemic, a state audit found.

MISSED A ROUNDUP? Get caught up on the New York Health Care Newsletter.