Cold Spring Hills nursing home workers face health insurance cutoff, union says

Dozens of health care workers lined the road in front of a Woodbury nursing home on Friday to demand that their employer pay its health insurance bill before they lose coverage.

Union organizers said Friday that the Cold Spring Hills Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation has not made contractual payments to the health insurer for three months. The 443 workers represented at the facility by 1199 SEIU will lose their health insurance on Aug. 25 if payments are not made to the insurer, Timothy Rodgers, vice president of the union’s nursing home division, said.

“Healthcare workers, as we see COVID ticking up again in New York State, cannot go without health insurance," Rodgers said.

Cold Spring Hills’ administrator Josef Simpser referred questions to an outside attorney, Ari Weiss of the law firm Morris Tuchman, who did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

The company pays a union insurer, the 1199 National Benefit Fund, which is a separate legal entity from the union, Rodgers said. “This employer is obligated under the contract to provide health insurance and to make payments to the National Benefit Fund and if they cannot do that and they cannot effectively operate the facility, then we need the state to step in.”

Rodgers said the union wants the state to appoint an emergency receiver to manage the facility if the owners won’t pay for health insurance.

The owners of the facility, which is Long Island’s second-largest nursing home, also face a civil lawsuit brought by State Attorney General Letitia James in December that alleges they had engaged in fraudulent practices to divert $22.6 million of government funding away from resident care to enrich themselves.

The attorney general’s lawsuit came 28 months after Newsday’s investigation — “Crisis, Care and Tragedy on LI” — exposed the impact of the pandemic on the facility and revealed the 588-bed facility’s place in the owners’ collection of profit-making nursing homes.

Friday’s worker action was the first day of a planned 11-day “informational picket,” organizers said. The workers are not allowed to strike under their contract but will use their lunch breaks and other breaks to demonstrate on the road outside the facility while they continue to report to work, spokeswoman Jenna Jackson said Friday.

Jackson said in a text message that the company owes "around $4.6 million in arrears" for union members' insurance including health, dental, vision, prescription, disability and paid family leave benefits.

About 70 workers chanted “Shame on you Cold Spring Hills!” and “What do we want? Benefits!” as cars passing by honked their horns in support around noon Friday.

Some workers said they have been rushing to see doctors and get prescriptions filled in recent days to make sure they had supplies of medications or that they received medical treatments before benefits are cut off later this month.

“I’m trying to beat the deadline,” said Judith Patterson-Djalo, 60, a program aide in adult day care, from Valley Stream. “No one can continue to work without going to the doctor, getting their medication that’s just a part of work.”

Patterson-Djalo said she had scheduled multiple medical appointments and was making sure she had a 90-day supply of prescription medicine in anticipation of losing health insurance.

Edward Ferguson, 57, an occupational therapist from Bay Shore, said if he loses his health care, he’ll have to pay for medication out of pocket for himself and his son who is on his health care plan.

“I’m a diabetic,” Ferguson said. “I’m on maintenance drugs and I’ve got to live.”