Healthcare for All is Constitutional

As the country focuses its attention on the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), single payer supporters are poised to respond publicly with the message: “ACA or not, Medicare for All is what we need!” A publicly funded, single payer healthcare system is constitutional and wouldn’t put more money into the pockets of insurance industry CEOs. In fact, the New York State legislature currently has a bill that would create a single payer system right here. Can we have healthcare for all? Yes, we can.

When: Friday, June 29th, 5:00pm

Where: the closed St. Vincent’s Hospital, West 13th St @ 7th Avenue, Manhattan

Join us at 5pm THE DAY AFTER the decision on healthcare is announced by the Supreme Court. The decision is expected this Thursday, 6/28.

PNHP-NY Metro, Healthcare-NOW! NYC, Single Payer New York, members of Healthcare for the 99% and other single payer supporters will gather and speak to the press about the real solution to our health care crisis.

Be sure to wear your white coats or scrubs!

Zone-Busting Rudin Family

The Zone-Busting and Safety Net-Shredding Rudin Family, aided by Political Enablers

The Rudin Luxury Condo Conversion Plan for St. Vincent's Hospital was approved on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, by Amanda Burden, the Park Avenue socialite, who volunteers to be City Planner for New York City. Other political enablers have joined Ms. Burden in aiding the Rudin Family's scheme to convert what used to be the only full-service hospital and Level 1 Trauma Center into luxury condominiums and deluxe townhouses.

With St. Vincent's closed, the West Side still has no hospital beds below 57th Street. How can we bring a hospital back to our community ? How can we get true universal healthcare ? Come Join the Discussion ! RSVP at the Facebook page for the Luxury Condos Can't Do CPR ! St. Vincent's Community Assembly.

Rudin Construction Staff Are Working On MLK Day

Martin Luther King, Jr., Day Protest outside St. Vincent's Hospital.

Stop closing hospitals ! In 1966, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and most inhuman."

Rudin Construction Staff Are Working On MLK Day

News Flash : Suzannah B. Troy reported that Rudin Management Company is making their construction workers are putting up blue walls and scaffolding on Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day on the Seventh Avenue side of St. Vincent's Hospital.

Silent Heart Attacks

OP-ED : The Rudin Condo Conversion Of St. Vincent's Hospital : Silent Heart Attacks Waiting To Happen, Which North Shore-LIJ-Lenox Hill Urgent Care Center Cannot Treat.

According to an article in USA Today, ambulances and Fire Rescue crews cannot be counted on transporting the most critically ill patients to stand-alone "emergency departments" such as the one that Bill Rudin is building for the West Village. Mr. Rudin is building a flim-flam urgent care center that has all of 2 "hospital beds" as political cover, so that he can get approved to convert St. Vincent's Hospital into luxury condos. In the rest of the country, in most smaller cities and even in rural communities, trauma patients and those having strokes or heart attacks cannot be transported to urgent care clinics or even to stand-alone "emergency departments," because those facilities cannot save people's lives when every minute matters. In Miami, for example, ambulances are forbidden from bringing patients to stand-alone "emergency departments."

Seeing as how there are acute healthcare emergencies, such as strokes and heart attacks that happen all the time, what is to become of those patients ? How can the Rudin family live with themselves by selling the lie that an urgent care clinic can treat silent heart attacks ? The very definition of a silent heart attack is one that the patient begins to suffer from indications that the patient does not believe are serious, and then the patient waits too long to get help. One must wonder if the entire Rudin Family Luxury Condo Conversion Plan isn't a metaphorical "silent heart attack" all unto itself : the luxury condo plan is a warning sign that the healthcare for the 99% is being eliminated, much like the social safety net is being shredded, and yet there are no alarm bells going off.

Rudin Social Contract Theory

In this video, an activist talks about the idea that, in our form of government, we owe each other an inter-connected responsibility as a result of having formed a society, that, according to Wikipedia, was created by people through a "process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept corresponding duties to protect themselves and one another from violence and other kinds of harm."

As a result of Rudin Management Company paying pennies on the dollar for the real estate of St. Vincent's Hospital, what, in effect, Bill Rudin and the Rudin family have done is to violate the terms of our social contract. The Rudin family are saying that they don't care that the larger community is being harmed as a result of their billion-dollar luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's real estate properties. As a result of the luxury condo conversion, the entire Lower West Side of Manhattan is being left with no full-service hospital and no Level 1 Trauma Center.

What should citizens then, therefore, do, now that the top 1% is now in violation of our social compact ?

On Christmas Eve, activists spent the night on the frigid sidewalk, in protest, and in full legal compliance with a court ruling that was issued pre-Zuccotti occupation. That court ruling, People v. Bounville, still allows protesters to occupy a city sidewalk for over-night sleep protests. Whereas powerholders, such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn continue to stick to their rationalisations for the eviction of Zuccotti Park and the requirement for protest permits, correspondingly, these politicians join the Rudin family in violation of our social compact. Once more and more activists figure out that the 1% no longer abide by our social compact, then activists will educate citizens. Then, citizens will join activists in their only remaining option : to #Occupy.

Gross Imbalance Manhattan Hospital Beds

How can this be responsible public healthcare policy ? Don't let the congested Lower West Side of Manhattan to be turned into a testing ground for North Shore-LIJ's free-standing first aid clinic experiment. We will pay for this risky experiment with our own lives.

Where would you want to be in case of an emergency ?

Christine Quinn Pays Lip Service To St. Vincent's Hospital

''The whole planet pays homage to Ground Zero, but they pay lip service to the hospital that was on the front lines that day,'' said a man named Christopher, who spoke at a rally at the end of a healthcare march by #OccupyWallStreet. Christopher spoke outside St. Vincent's Hospital. Because St. Vincent's was a Level 1 Trauma Center, it was the hospital designated to receive those injured by the September 11 attacks. It was closed in 2010, because we don't have a single-payer healthcare system. Right now, Brad Hoylman and Christine Quinn want to turn St. Vincent's into luxury condominiums in a controversial plan by the Rudin Management Company.