• One Hospital System Sued 2,500 Patients After Pandemic Hit

    From Biased Journalism@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jan 5 08:44:12 2021
    nytimes.com
    One Hospital System Sued 2,500 Patients After Pandemic Hit
    Brian M. Rosenthal

    The largest health system in New York, led by a close ally of the
    governor, continues to sue over medical debt during the Covid-19
    crisis, even after other big hospitals suspended lawsuits.

    When the coronavirus began spreading through New York, Gov. Andrew M.
    Cuomo ordered state-run hospitals to stop suing patients over unpaid
    medical bills, and almost all of the major private hospitals in the
    state voluntarily followed suit by suspending their claims.

    But one chain of hospitals has plowed ahead with thousands of
    lawsuits: Northwell Health, which is the state's largest health system
    and is run by one of Mr. Cuomo's closest allies.

    The nonprofit Northwell sued more than 2,500 patients last year,
    records show, a flood of litigation even as the pandemic has led to
    widespread job losses and economic uncertainty.

    The Northwell lawsuits each sought an average of $1,700 in unpaid
    bills, plus large interest payments. They hit teachers, construction
    workers, grocery store employees and others, including some who had
    lost work in the pandemic or gotten sick themselves.

    "My salary was cut in half. I'm now working only two days a week. And
    now I have to deal with this," said Carlos Castillo, a hotel worker in
    New York City who was sued for $4,043 after being hospitalized with a
    seizure at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, which is part of the
    Northwell system. Mr. Castillo, 37, said he was worried the hospital
    would seize his paychecks and leave him unable to pay rent.

    Across the country, medical debt lawsuits have grown increasingly
    common in recent years, as health care costs have risen and insurance
    companies have shifted more of the burden onto patients through larger deductibles and co-payments. The cases are rarely contested in court
    and usually lead to default judgments, allowing hospitals to garnish
    wages and freeze accounts to extract money, sometimes without the
    patient's knowledge.

    Northwell has not been alone in pursuing debt through the courts
    during the pandemic. About 50 hospitals in New York have sued a total
    of 5,000 patients since March, according to a search of filings in
    courts around the state. Most are small and located upstate.

    Northwell stands out because of the sheer number of its lawsuits --
    and because of its connections to Mr. Cuomo. The other major New York
    City hospital systems, including NewYork-Presbyterian and NYU Langone
    Health, have largely suspended lawsuits during the pandemic. It is
    unclear when they might begin suing again.

    The Northwell system operates 23 hospitals, including Long Island
    Jewish Medical Center, Lenox Hill Hospital and North Shore University
    Hospital. It brings in about $12.5 billion in annual revenue and
    received $1.2 billion in emergency funding through the stimulus
    package in the federal CARES Act last year.

    It has sued over unpaid bills as small as $700, records show.

    Northwell's chief executive officer, Michael Dowling, was the state
    health director and deputy secretary to former Gov. Mario Cuomo, the
    current governor's late father, and he has been a close friend to the
    younger Mr. Cuomo for more than three decades.

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    During the pandemic, Mr. Dowling has served as the governor's closest
    ally in the hospital industry and his liaison to all of the state's
    hospitals. He has set up meetings and delivered messages for Mr.
    Cuomo, led a council to increase bed capacity at hospitals, overseen
    patient transfers to field hospitals and worked with the state on
    studies of antibody test results that have been used to identify hot
    spots for the virus.

    Mr. Dowling has also appeared frequently with Mr. Cuomo at the
    governor's news briefings; both men wrote books this year, and Mr.
    Cuomo wrote a blurb promoting Mr. Dowling's writing.

    Northwell received the first doses of the coronavirus vaccine in the
    state last month.

    Barbara Osborn, a Northwell spokeswoman, declined to say whether Mr.
    Dowling had discussed the lawsuits with Mr. Cuomo. A spokesman for the
    governor did not respond to requests for comment.

    Richard Miller, the system's chief business strategy officer, defended
    the cases, saying Northwell had the right to collect what it was owed.
    He said that Northwell has a financial-assistance program for
    low-income patients that is more generous than required by the
    government, and he said the system sues only employed patients that it
    believes have the ability to pay and who do not respond to outreach
    attempts.

    "We have no interest in pursing these cases legally. It's not what we
    want to do," Mr. Miller said in an interview. "Unfortunately, in some
    cases, they're not leaving us much of an option."

    Mr. Miller added that even with the stimulus money, Northwell lost
    $300 million last year.

    He also said that all of the suits that Northwell had filed in 2020
    stemmed from hospitalizations that occurred months or years before the
    pandemic began.

    The other health systems that filed the most lawsuits last year echoed
    that sentiment, emphasizing that they have not sued any coronavirus
    patients.

    St. Peter's Health Partners, which runs a chain of hospitals in the
    Albany area and filed about 1,000 lawsuits last year, and Oneida
    Health, a health care system near Syracuse that filed about 500
    lawsuits, both said in statements that they temporarily stopped suing
    in the spring but resumed over the summer.

    Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the
    Community Service Society, a nonprofit that advocates anti-poverty
    policies, criticized hospitals for suing patients during the pandemic,
    even over unpaid bills from hospitalizations in past years.

    She said that a few hundred dollars may not mean much to a hospital
    chain but can be a significant burden for a low-income patient. "It
    means someone is going hungry," Ms. Benjamin said. "It means a kid is
    not getting a winter coat."

    In some cases, the lawsuits have sought even larger sums. John T.
    Mather Memorial Hospital on Long Island, which is owned by Northwell,
    sued Thomas Kasper in April for $31,340 in unpaid bills -- plus about
    $8,000 in interest and fees, records show.

    That hospital also sued Scott Buckley for $21,028, plus about $4,000
    in interest and fees.

    "I am literally broke," said Mr. Buckley, 48, who works at a Stop &
    Shop grocery store. "I don't have a penny to my name. I have three
    kids. If they take my paycheck, I won't have anything."

    One of Mr. Buckley's daughters, Kacey Buckley, 22, who works for a cat
    breeder, is also being sued over unpaid medical bills in an unrelated
    case, records show. Northwell recently began garnishing 10 percent of
    her paycheck.

    The Community Service Society published a report on medical debt
    lawsuits earlier last year. Ms. Benjamin said the group's latest
    numbers showed that New York's nonprofit hospitals had filed more than
    40,000 lawsuits against patients between 2015 and 2019.

    The group found that Northwell sued patients far more often than any
    other hospital chain -- about 14,000 in that period, or about 2,800 a
    year. That was about one-third of the suits identified by the advocacy
    group; Northwell operates only about one-tenth of the hospitals in the
    state.

    Northwell filed fewer cases last year, but not by much.

    State lawmakers introduced legislation last year that would increase transparency in medical billing, limit the time period in which
    hospitals can sue and cap the interest that hospitals can collect.

    The bill's sponsors, Assemblyman Richard Gottfried and Senator Gustavo
    Rivera, both Democrats who chair their chambers's health committees,
    said the lawsuits filed during the pandemic were evidence of the
    importance of the proposal.

    Still, they said, it will be difficult to pass the bill in Albany,
    where the hospital industry has a lot of clout.

    "It's going to be difficult, there's no doubt," Mr. Rivera said. "The
    hospitals are powerful."

    Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

    Brian M. Rosenthal is an investigative reporter on the Metro Desk of
    The New York Times and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in
    Investigative Reporting. @brianmrosenthal • Facebook

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