FRONTLINE VOICES
In our A block, Mount Sinai Health System is facing backlash after it stopped accepting some new patients enrolled in Medicaid,Medicare and other publicly subsidized insurance plans, a move the New York State Nurses Association says could further strain safety-net hospitals and deny care to some of New York’s most vulnerable patients. We invited Dr. Steve Auerbach, a retired U.S. Public Health Service captain and Kelly Smith of the Nonviolent Medicaid Army join us to discuss what Mount Sinai’s decision says about access to healthcare and the argument that healthcare should be a human right.
Should healthcare finally be considered a human right?
In our B block, we cover how retired New York City municipal workers are renewing their fight to protect the traditional Medicare and supplemental healthcare benefits they say they earned and were promised after decades of public service. Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, joins us to discuss the retirees’ years-long legal and political battle, their recent massive $53 million copay settlement, and why their fight against being moved into a private predatory Medicare Advantage plan has become part of a larger national debate over the privatization of Medicare.
