Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Remarks at the Groundbreaking of the New Brooklyn Health Center

(Editors’ Note: The following is a partial transcript of the remarks delivered on March 19 by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Health Center in Brooklyn)

It is an honor to be here and it’s a joy to be here. This is something special for Brooklyn, for the whole city. But it’s also an example to our nation what’s happening right here today—if you think about people getting the health care they need, exactly when they need it, getting it in an entirely affordable manner, in a way that emphasizes preventative care, in a way that emphasizes wellbeing for the whole family. I am not a doctor and I am not a psychologist, but I can certainly say if you make health care inviting, and positive, and easy, people will take more advantage of it. If you don’t, unsurprisingly, they won’t get all the care they need, when they need it, and it will get worse and worse for their health, and it will get more and more costly. So what the brilliance is of this model is that it fits with every other effort to address the needs of working people, and it fits with every other effort to lower the expenses in their lives, and it does it in one of the most innovative ways in the country. And if we’re going to move forward as a city and a country, we have to—we have to help everyday people afford the cost of living.

And a lot of us are working—I know Peter Ward is working every day to improve the wages and benefits of working people. But the other thing we must do is lower the cost in their lives, whether it’s affordable housing or affordable health care. If we do both those things, we change the playing field forever, and that’s the mission of this administration. And we have such a tremendous partner in Peter Ward.

Peter comes from this borough, and he is a proud Brooklynite. He is from a neighborhood not far from here, and he grew up without tremendous advantages. And I remember Peter, you told a story very powerfully about what afterschool meant in your life when you were supporting our afterschool plan. And you did so much to help us achieve afterschool for our middle school kids and pre-k for our younger kids. And you talked about the transformative impact it had on you. Peter, from that afterschool program, became a leader, and then more of a leader, and then more of a leader to the point today that he is one of the indispensable labor leaders in this city, but he’s also someone who has a vision of where we need to go to create a more just society. And what you’re seeing today is part of that. This is about literally building the kind of society we should live in, where people have full access to affordable health care.

So, there is a great story here, but it is not an accidental story. This was hard work, this was vision, this was grit, this was innovation—an incessant desire to build out a good model and then take it farther and farther. That is the kind of leadership that we all should prize. Let’s thank Peter Ward for what he has done.

Now, this center for all the members of Hotel Trades Council will be the newest, and it may be the most beautiful, and the most innovative of all, but it follows in a tradition innovated by the Union. I went to the center in Harlem and I literally could not think of health care the same after that. It’s like you had seen the future and knew there was someplace better we could get to.

And, as Peter said, because this model is based on everyone winning, it does change the relationship between labor and management when everyone is driving down cost together and figuring out how to have a healthy workforce together. So we have two industry leaders here who have been real partners in this endeavor, and have done a lot for this city as well, and I want to thank you both—Joe Spinnato, the President of the Hotel Association, and Vijay Dandapani, the Chair of the Hotel Association.

And I most especially want to thank all the members of the Hotel Trades Council because you’ve done a lot for this city. You’ve done a lot for all the people you represent in the council, but you’ve done a lot for this city and, again, I want to thank all of you. So many of you participated in our efforts to create pre-k, create afterschool, create affordable housing. You’ve been tremendous allies.

I also want to say that this health center is going to be an idea that spreads. And I can say, as an elected official, it’s my job to promote this model and to see what we can do on the city level to emulate this model. And I’m certainly going to turn to our Comptroller in that process because we’re looking to save money, aren’t we? I want to thank Comptroller Scott Stringer for being here today.

This health care center model turns the whole equation on its head. You walk in the door, you get your appointment, and then you can get other appointments with other doctors under the same roof. The pharmacy is in the same facility, which is a simple but brilliant element. You get your prescription on one floor, you go to another floor and it’s filled instantly. And in fact, at this center, you’re going to have one of the largest pharmacies, I think, in any of your centers. And you’re expanding it out. There’s dental—the most elusive of services—dental is here under this roof. It’s extraordinary and it makes people want to be here.

Even with all those services under one roof, the goal of this center is that 85 percent of the patients who walk in the door will have gotten everything they need and will be out the door within an hour. That is the kind of timeline New Yorkers can relate to.

We’re going to use this model and see if we can build it out with our city employees as well. It’s a big project. It’ll take a lot of work. But it’s something that we should try, in every way we can, to emulate.

And as a city we have to keep driving down health care costs. And I’m very proud of the labor deals we’ve made so far—76 percent of our workforce is under contract—but importantly, in those labor deals, $3.4 billion dollars in health care savings built into those labor deals, and that’s with a conventional health care approach. I think we can do much more if we can, over time, move to a model that’s been innovated here.

We are looking at this model very carefully because I think it offers so much for the people of this city and beyond. To Peter and to everyone gathered here today, my warmest congratulations. This is truly a great day for the members of HTC, but, beyond that, a great day for New York City.

Mayor de Blasio speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony.

Mayor Bill de Blasio with Local 6 Executive Board Member Ha-Chhao Yi.