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.
New York Today: Compelling daily stories, transit news and a glimpse
at the lighter side of life in the city.
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
--
==================================================
=Don't forget, you are reading Biased Journalism!=
=Anyone that isn't confused doesn't really
understand the situation.=
==================================================
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)