Hospital Workers and the Health Care Crisis

This paper focuses on the shortcomings of hospital cost containment and health planning as experienced by New York City's municipal hospital workers. It documents the failure of regulation: understaffing and overcrowding; low pay; and lack of career mobility. It puts forth a policy agenda of universal coverage; steps to achieve increased staffing; improvements in pay and conditions; and ways to build career mobility. The author calls on the regulators in New York to go beyond cost controls to the use of incentives to improve both the quality of care and the quality of the workforce for the future.