HCA Statement in Response to MTA Bailout

Download: HCA President Joanne Cunningham's Statement in Response to MTA Bailout

For Immediate Release: May 7, 2009

Contact:

Roger L. Noyes (518) 810-0665 (518) 275-6961 cell

A Statement from HCA President Joanne Cunningham on the MTA Bailout Package

"The recently negotiated MTA bailout package slams home care and other providers with yet another regressive tax, this time through a capricious payroll assessment that takes a cut from wages paid to employees.

"This new tax is yet another indiscriminate levy at the expense of critical health care services — not unlike the health care gross receipts tax (GRT) imposed on home health care providers and patients in this year's State Budget.

"As a result of this week's MTA bailout, home care providers in the New York Metropolitan region are now slapped with a two-way toll: a GRT on incoming revenue for vital patient services, followed up with a payroll tax on the back-end for employee wages.

"New York State is hemorrhaging jobs, our economy continues to falter, and our health care system has already borne the brunt of enormous funding cuts during State Budget negotiations a mere month ago. And yet the New York Metropolitan transit system gets a lifeline while the same region's health care and business community again finds the rug pulled out from underneath it.

"Commuters undoubtedly deserve relief from a fare hike. The home care community is particularly sympathetic to this aim, since our services rely upon a well-functioning transportation infrastructure to deliver care directly to patients in their homes. But the negotiated payroll tax will only further damage the provision of home care — and New York's fragile economy as a whole — by directly funneling resources away from vital health care services and from the health care community's support of needed jobs.

"Home care providers offer an important cost-effective public service. Yet, we've endured cut after cut for vital programs, which means having to find our own way of making up the difference, and continuing to do more with less."

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