Soaring medical costs fuel the city’s growing budgetary problems

City Hall’s growing budgetary woes are fueled by skyrocketing healthcare costs for municipal employees and retirees, which could potentially increase the Big Apple’s deficit by $3 billion a year by 2027, according to statistics obtained by The Post.

An analysis by the Independent Budget Office provided to the newspaper shows that the cost of providing medical, dental and vision care, as well as prescriptions for employees, will reach $8.2 billion by 2027, up from $6.1 billion in 2023.

Retiree spending will rise to $3.9 billion from $3.1 billion over the same four-year period, according to IBO projects.

“Something has to give, and if you wait until you are in a crisis situation, then you will cut budgets and everyone will suffer: the public, unions,” said Andrew Rein, executive director of the Citizens Budget Commission.

Nowhere have costs risen faster than at major hospitals across the region, bringing together an unusual coalition of employers, unions and city legislators who are demanding that major medical systems cut costs.

A recent report from the 32BJ Building Services Union used members’ medical billing data to find that private hospitals across New York City charge far more for identical procedures than the city’s own public hospital system.

For example, an outpatient colonoscopy costs $10,368 at New York-Presbyterian but only costs $4,139 at Mount Sinai Hospital. In the city’s public hospital system, it’s even cheaper: $2,185.

Union projects that limit spending on hospitals could save the Big Apple $2 billion a year.

That staggering figure helped win the city council’s overwhelming support for a law that would require hospitals to disclose their prices to city officials, who then post them on a searchable website in an attempt to keep costs down.

“This bill, among other things, will allow the city for the first time to use its purchasing power to lower costs because we will finally know what these hospitals charge for various services. procedures,” said the bill’s lead author, Manhattan City Council member Julie Menin (D-Manhattan).

A full hearing on the bill is scheduled for Thursday before city council, where the powerful hospital lobby of the Greater New York Hospital Association is expected to testify.

Efforts to crack down on hospitals, one of the most powerful industries in the state, have even won fans at one of the state’s most prominent conservative think tanks, The Empire Center, at exorbitant prices.

“Among the various aspects of healthcare spending, hospitals are the largest, and even though healthcare has moved away from inpatient care,” Bill Hammond, Empire Center health policy analyst, told The Post. “In New York, their spending is higher than the national average and growing faster than the national average.”

Hammond says data compiled by the federal government shows that New York City spends 22 percent more on hospital stays than the national average, and that the gap has grown to 43 percent by 2020.

He added: “This gap has roughly doubled in 10 years, and if you want to think about why healthcare is so expensive, you can’t ignore the dominance of hospitals.”