Adequate Health Care: The Right of Every Person

A crisis now exists in the health care system in the City of New York. Mayor Koch has cited fiscal considerations, among others, in his call for the outright closing of some municipal hospitals as a part of his goal to remove the City altogether from the "hospital business."

The Christian Gospel impresses upon us the integral wholeness of body and spirit. As well as addressing spiritual needs, our Lord frequently healed persons whose bodies were physically broken with disease. His ministry informs our understanding that adequate health care is a basic right of us all as persons created in the image of God. This Biblical imperative is being undermined daily by the looming threat of hospital closings which the Mayor has promulgated. The body politic is disserved greatly by this course of action.

The abandonment of the municipal hospitals will leave many areas in our City without any health care and will render costs to the public treasury far in excess of the supposed savings. The fiscal reality is that provision of Medicare- and Medicaid-reimbursed services in private hospitals is notably more expensive than n the municipal institutions. To sell our or to give away City hospitals to private hospitals, as is being proposed with the Queens Hospital Center, will only insure greater expense of public funds and not less. This action can only be the precursor of a serious deterioration in health care within the communities of southeast Queens which currently hold a federal designation as "medically underserved" areas. Those who are medically indigent — the working poor — can only expect to find no available health care if the public hospital is passed to private control.

As members of the Christian community in Queens, we of the Queens Federation of Churches must object strenuously to this debilitating consequence of the Mayor's objectives.

We assert that the burden of proof must be borne by those who would give away public assets at the expense of taxpayers' interests and their health.

We support the Religious Committee on the New York City Health Crisis in its effort to call for a rational health care system and an end to hospital closings and the threat of closings.

We support local community efforts to provide a responsible local voice in needs-assessment and decision-making processes which affect the delivery of fundamental health care services.