Suffolk's policy not healthy

Suffolk County has made the decision to save a buck by gambling with the health of its residents.

In a new policy, which will take effect on Monday, residents going to Suffolk health care centers who do not have health insurance will be pushed to file for Medicaid.

And if they refuse -- or can't afford $75, the new high end of a sliding scale for services -- they will be turned away.

Most of those denied service likely will be illegal immigrants. Spare me, please, the usual venom about how illegal immigrants are a drain on the local health care system. They are. But there are reasons hospitals, which operate under rules different from Suffolk's centers, are not allowed to turn them away. Among them is the simplest reason of all: Sick people make people sick.

There's yet to be a germ, disease or disorder caught checking a green card before deciding to dig in. That means illegal immigrants turned away from -- or opting on their own to leave Suffolk health care centers for financial reasons -- could go on to spread disease. This is not good public health policy.

"I couldn't disagree with that," Dr. James Tomarkin, the county health commissioner, said in an interview, adding that he was charged with implementing a policy handed down by his bosses.

Suffolk's policy would impact only new patients; which means that illegal immigrants already receiving care would continue to do so. Does that make any kind of budget, policy or public health care sense?

Suffolk County officials said they were forced into taking so dire a stand because of state budget cuts. The cuts to local budgets are deep. And Suffolk is hit particularly and unfairly hard because it -- unlike Nassau, which has Nassau University Medical Center -- relies solely on a string of health care centers to provide medical care for poorer residents.

"Suffolk isn't the only culprit here," agreed Kevin Dahill, head of the Nassau Suffolk Hospital Council. "The other is the state."

As a result of those cuts, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy decided to cut funding to health care centers in Huntington and Coram. The Dolan Center, affiliated with Huntington Hospital, is independent of the county and has other funding sources. (The Dolan Center is supported by the Dolan family, which owns Newsday.)

The center in Coram is affiliated with Stony Brook hospital. Employees at the center -- the only one in Suffolk slated to shut because of the funding cuts -- are planning an informational protest this morning.

It's bad enough that the more than 8,000 patients would have to travel south of Sunrise Highway to get to the nearest health care clinic.

Most likely won't go. Instead, they'll join the illegal immigrants who will be forced to seek care at hospitals, which is more expensive.

"What Suffolk is doing is counterproductive," Dahill said. "Those centers are supposed to be the place for primary care. If patients wait until they are sicker, the care will take longer and be more expensive."

Suffolk's reputation has suffered internationally because of the way immigrants, illegal and otherwise, were treated. Is this Levy's last stand on the issue? One more dig at critics of his immigration stance before the lame duck ends his term?

No, said Dan Aug, a Levy spokesman. He said the administration had tried to get county legislators to sit down to discuss how to handle the state cuts -- which, under county charter, he said, required county cuts in programs those revenues would have funded -- and that Suffolk had tried to work with Stony Brook to keep the Coram center open. "Nobody wants to be here, but somebody has to make the tough decisions," he said.

Aug is right. But being tough on health care funding shouldn't potentially put the public's health at risk.