Medical Malpractice Survivors Urge Union To Condemn Proposals That Limit New York Patients’ Legal Rights

For Release:
March 10, 2011

Contact: Joanne Doroshow
917/548-5263; [email protected]

Lisa Cohen, 310/395-2544;
[email protected]

MEDICAL MALPRACTICE SURVIVORS URGE UNION TO CONDEMN PROPOSALS
THAT LIMIT NEW YORK PATIENTS’ LEGAL RIGHTS

Joined by the Center for Justice & Democracy, Medical Malpractice Survivors Say
Medical Malpractice Proposals Will Devastate Working Families; Say Leaders Have Tricked
Workers Into Agreeing to Give Up Their Own Rights

New York –Medical malpractice survivors from New York, joined by the Center for Justice & Democracy, today attended a counter effort in the midst of a rally in Lower Manhattan today held by hospital executives and the hospital workers union, SEIU/1199.  They say that health care workers have been gravely misled by their union leadership and their employers, who apparently struck a deal to support permanent, government-mandated limits on the legal rights of those injured by medical malpractice.  According to the group, these proposals target for particular ruin the lives of brain-damaged babies.

“The rights of union workers, their children and every family member, will be permanently stripped away by these brutal and unnecessary medical malpractice measures,” said Joanne Doroshow, Executive Director of the Center for Justice & Democracy.  “The union leadership is engaged in  a cruel hoax against its own membership, telling workers to surrender their own rights and those of grievously injured children, including those who suffer brain injury, amputation, paralysis, quadriplegia, cancer and death at the hands of incompetent health care providers.  We are asking members to oppose this legislation and to stand up for the rights of all New Yorkers to obtain justice through our court system when they or their child are harmed by negligent health care.”

The Center for Justice & Democracy has filed an ethics complaint against hospital lobbyists and executives who formulated these measures as part of the Governor’s Medicaid Redesign Team.  “These proposals, which would condemn catastrophically-injured babies to a lifetime of additional hardship and misery, came out of Governor Andrew Cuomo's Medicaid Redesign Team, which was dominated by self-dealing lobbyists and hospital executives making Wall Street level salaries, including some attending today’s rally,” Doroshow said.  “These proposals will create a financial windfall for negligent hospitals, incompetent health care providers and their insurance companies.  It is part of a shameful budget deal that was written behind the closed doors of state government, and must be rejected.”