Like many aspects of New York life, these issues are very complicated. Everybody likes having a hospital within easy reach. But hospitals are extraordinarily expensive to run, and they have been steadily closing in this city, in part because many of them are inefficient money losers with lots of empty beds.
We will first discuss the state of hospitals in New York, focusing on sometimes-nasty battles over two institutions that had to shut their doors in the last few years: St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village and Long College Hospital (generally known as LICH) in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
This article is a good synthesis of the core issues, including the view of a fellow named Stephen Berger, a Wall Street guy picked by Gov. Cuomo to study the fate of many hospitals. He basically said that a lot of them had to be shuttered:
Here are detailed looks at where St. Vincent’s and LICH went wrong and why they are no more, just in the last couple of years:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/nyregion/03vincents.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/nyregion/debating-a-fix-for-hospitals-in-dire-straits.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/nyregion/the-end-for-long-island-college-hospital.html
Here are some broader looks at disappearing neighborhood hospitals, including a view on the political left (such as The Nation magazine, deploring plans to close hospitals) and from the right (like the New York Post, arguing that realities are what they are, so shut ’em down):
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175811/nycs-disappearing-neighborhood-hospitals#
http://nypost.com/2013/09/09/why-nyc-needs-hospitals-to-close/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/nyregion/debating-a-fix-for-hospitals-in-dire-straits.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hospitals_in_New_York_City (THIS IS A FACT SHEET: A LIST OF HOSPITALS IN THE CITY, INCLUDING A REMARKABLE TALLY (SOMETHING LIKE 160) HOSPITALS THAT HAVE BEEN SHUTTERED OVER THE YEARS)
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140118/MAGAZINE/301189967
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1068778/pdf/hsresearch00525-0095.pdf
And this is a 2009 New York Times article on former mayor Edward I. Koch, who died in 2013. This piece, as you’ll see, has Koch reflecting on a variety of subjects. The one I’m interested in for our purposes is about his insistence in the late 1970s on closing Sydenham Hospital in Harlem. That led to huge protests in Harlem by local residents who called Koch a racist. I don’t believe he was a racist. But he could be insensitive, and as he himself came to to regret, the decision to close Sydenham was a prime example. We may discuss this more fully in class. It reflects the profound attachment that communities have to their hospitals:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/nyregion/01koch.html?pagewanted=all
Then we will discuss some public health issues, including the question I asked about what the role of the city should be in regulating what people eat and drink. Is it sensible for government to get involved, or is it state nanny-ism?
Among many changes proposed by former Mayor Bloomberg, his proposal to limit the size of sugary drinks in stores and some other public pieces was perhaps the most controversial.
His Board of Health passed what is usually (but not accurately) referred to as the soda ban:
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/09/13/nyc-board-of-health-passes-soda-ban/
Various groups took the city to court over this. Here are the issues that went to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/05/nyregion/soda-ban-new-york-city-in-appeals-court.html
And in the end, that court shot the ban down:
Mayor de Blasio, who doesn’t agree with former Mayor Bloomberg on many issues, is willing to pursue a new soda ban. But specifics have yet to be heard:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-mayor-bill-de-blasio-pushes-forward-on-soda-ban-1413421275
Meanwhile, obesity rates in young children are finally dropping:
But we are still left with the fundamental question: Do we have a right to dangerous behavior without government telling us what to do:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/opinion/bittman-rethinking-our-rights-to-dangerous-behaviors.html
Anyway, here are bunch of pieces that collectively could fall under the heading of: Michael Bloomberg: Public Health Hero or Autocratic Nanny? We have had no mayor in modern times who pushed public health initiatives as vigrously as Bloomberg did, not just on soda sizes but also on smoking and various restaurant notices on calorie counts, trans fats bans, salt limitations and more:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/12/25/michael-bloomberg-big-brother-or-pioneer
http://the2x2project.org/what-public-health-legacy-does-bloomberg-leave-behind/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/22/bloomberg-public-health_n_4489289.html
Here is a judge recently upholding a city requirement that warnings about sodium
content be posted (though his order has been held up while an appellate court reviews the issue):
I meant to include this in my big memo on public health initiatives, but it slipped my mind. This is an interesting piece from yesterday’s New York Times on a plan in Britain to tax sugary drinks at different rates depending how much sugar they contain. More sugar = higher tax. This is different from sugar taxes in effect in Mexico and in Berkeley, Calif. Take a look:
Yet one more thing: The Times’s Web site post a graphic this afternoon (maybe it will be in the printed paper on Thursday) showing how New York gets its water. It’s a clear look at what’s involved. Hard to imagine many things more important for public health than an assured supply of safe water. Here it is:
