![AkivaShapiro's tweet photo. Hard-hitting interview by Hamodia of the leadership of Maimonides Hospital about the proposed H+H merger. And an exclusive: “Hospital Claims Doctors On Board, Leaked Recording Shows Otherwise.”
An excerpt: “In the interview that appears on these pages, Dr. John Marshall, Chief Medical Officer of Maimonides Medical Center, assured readers that “the physicians are staying,” while Dr. Mitchell Katz, President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals [H+H], stated flatly that “the doctors are on board.” But at an internal town hall meeting held the same week—a recording of which was obtained by Hamodia—their remarks to their own medical staff painted a very different picture.
Over the course of nearly two hours, Maimonides physicians asked pointed, unresolved questions about the financial assumptions underlying the deal, pressed for answers about what would happen to their contracts after 250 days (when [H+H] will, according to information shared during the town hall meeting, no longer guarantee the fulfillment of contracts), and heard Dr. Marshall himself say, when asked point-blank whether the transaction was certain: “So few things in life are certain.”
In the Hamodia interview, Dr. Mitchell Katz, President and CEO of [H+H], stated that “the doctors are on board.” Dr. Marshall was more expansive: “I’ve had conversations with literally almost all of them personally,” he said, adding that physician fears about the merger were “unfounded” and that “all the evidence we’ve had so far is that the physicians are going to stay.”
The town hall recording tells a starkly differently story. Physician after physician rose to pose questions that went to the heart of the transaction—questions that, in several cases, Marshall and Katz acknowledged they could not fully answer.
One doctor challenged the financial projections directly: “As long as I’ve been employed here, there’s been a three, four, $500 million deficit that was closed at the end of the year by state funding. So going forward, if the assumptions about the revenue aren’t what we think they’re going to be, how do those get closed?”
Another raised concerns about the reliability of the improved Medicaid reimbursement rates that form the central pillar of the deal’s financial case: “The improved Medicaid payments are not guaranteed. It’s something that we’re kind of hoping for, but it goes from year to year, and it’s not necessarily going to continue forward. And in Crain’s, there was recently an article about the finances of HHC that they’re also somewhat limited. So the question is, with all these points, where do we really stand?”
A third physician, reflecting on years of unimplemented strategic planning at the hospital, asked how governance and decision-making would actually work under the new structure: “We’ve spent years and years on strategic planning committees where nothing got accomplished. How are those decisions going to be made? How are we going to be involved in that?”
Full story below.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HHLDlegWIAA_CQT.jpg)
Olivia
Online
Akiva Shapiro
@AkivaShapiro
Constitutional & commercial litigator (Roman Catholic Diocese v Cuomo, free speech/defamation, civil RICO, torts & breach of K), Jewish/Israel issues, daddy x 4
New Jersey, USA
Joined December 2012
248 Following
438 Followers
231 Posts
The U.S. delegation in Switzerland is like the eager American tourists in the Turkish bazaar who are just darn-tootin’ thrilled to hand over all of their dollars for a cheap souvenir and a smile.
Trump and JD Vance's foreign policy: lose Italy and Israel, but keep Iran. Tough on allies, soft on the Islamic regime in Iran. They scold Israel, fight with NATO, mock Europe, and lecture Ukraine, then sit down with the mullahs and ask how many more billions of dollars from American taxpayers they would like. It's like getting robbed and then asking the thief whether he'd prefer cash or a wire transfer. At this point, either Tehran has performed magic on them, or they genuinely think the regime will change if they keep being nice to it—which is even worse than magic. For 47 years, the world and the Iranian people tried being nice to the regime and got Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and terrorism in the West.
The images from Switzerland are just plain embarrassing. The U.S. delegation looks like the nerdy kids in the high school lunchroom who don’t have anywhere to sit and are watching awkwardly as all the cool kids dap each other up.
Lots of coverage of the incredible bid-rigging and fraud case brought by DOJ against NY health officials and the preselected “winning” bidder of a multibillion dollar public contract.
This is vindication for my client Freedom Care, which brought this bid-fixing to light in our lawsuit last year against the NY Department of Health and its top official.
In a plot worthy of Suits, the first whistleblower surfaced on the afternoon before our TRO hearing. We rushed to interview him and submit his affidavit revealing the fraud minutes before the judge came onto the bench the next morning. But that (and mounds of subsequent evidence) wasn’t enough to convince the court, because State officials and the winning bidder denied and obfuscated and denied again.
DOJ, however, has investigative powers that no private citizen can muster. And that’s what it took to finally and fully reveal this “massive fraud scheme,” including internal emails admitting the winning bidder submitted what one of its officials called a “recklessly low bid” to get the contract, knowing they would fraudulently take other moneys once they were ensconced. As one employee bragged to another, “this hourly rate game is going to become our hobby.”
A TV-worthy smoking gun.
BREAKING: Bombshell fraud case filed by the Department of Justice—a “sham bid process” run by the NY Dep’t of Health resulted in a multibillion-dollar public CDPAP contract being awarded via collusion with the “winning” bidder, exactly as we alleged in our challenge to the award for Freedom Care.
In its 57-page complaint, DOJ lays out in detail the internal emails and documents proving every single major allegation we made—which the awardee PPL and DOH officials repeatedly and falsely denied, at times under penalty of perjury, in getting our bid-rigging lawsuit dismissed.
The wheels of justice may turn slowly, but on a good day they do turn…
Also known as a taking….
IT BEGINS…
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveils plan to "transfer ownership" from landlords to "the community"
Mayor Mamdani: the refugees you post about exist because 22 Arab states launched a war to destroy Israel on May 15, 1948—rejecting the UN plan that also called for a Palestinian state. In its aftermath, 800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands. Your post mentions none of this.
Join me for the @OrthodoxUnion Attorneys Conference in Washington D.C. on June 21-22, where I will be a featured speaker along with Hon. @HarmeetKDhillon, Judge Steven Menashi, Hon. @andrealucasEEOC, @JudgeSolomson, @SenJackyRosen, Prof. @MAHelfand, and others.
Hear from senior government officials, attorneys, and policy experts on key legal issues impacting the Jewish community, including combatting antisemitism, religious liberty, and the evolving national legal landscape.
I will be presenting on the constitutional and political dimensions of buffer zone laws protecting synagogues and Jewish communities, drawing on my experience advising on first-in-the-nation synagogue buffer zone ordinances passed into law last year in Bergenfield and Teaneck, NJ.
Thank you @NDiament for the invitation.
Register today at https://t.co/VDGqezKvqn
The registration deadline is May 27 and CLE credit will be offered.
I hope to see you there!
There couldn't be a clearer example of pro-Hamas DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) tactics than the publication of planted, fabricated, and biologically impossible sexual abuse allegations against the IDF and Israelis in the @nytimes the day before the release of a 300-page, 410-footnote report—"SILENCED NO MORE--Sexual Terror Unveiled: The Untold Atrocities of October 7 and Against Hostages in Captivity"—by The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children. Full report available here: https://t.co/UNPw0ECbOn.
This report was the product of a two-year investigation and documentation project led by Dr. @CochavElkayam, who I had the honor of meeting at @ColumbiaIIJS a number of months ago. She and her team could not possibly have been more thorough in sourcing every finding to video and forensic evidence and identified first-person testimony. It is a truly astounding piece of investigative work and a clinic in the application of evidence-based research to legal frameworks. Nor could they have been more sensitive in their presentation, which is nonetheless searing and heart-wrenching.
Yet @NickKristof has the gall to close his NYT hit piece—built on the most untrustworthy and agenda-driven of sources, laundered through Israel-despising NGOs of ill-repute, many anonymous or second-hand and, of those sources who are identified, many of whom openly celebrated October 7—with the claim that the “horrific abuse inflicted on Israeli women on Oct. 7 now happens to Palestinians day after day.”
In this way, and throughout the piece, the comprehensively documented sexual abuse committed on October 7 against Israeli women (and men, as made clear in Silenced No More) is minimized (“Deny”); Israel is made into the perpetrator of sexual violence (“Attack”); and the true victims are painted as carrying out even graver wrongs on a far greater scale (“Reverse Victim and Offender”).
Mr. Kristof, you’ve been played.
This is a hard article to read, but I hope you'll do so. I've spent some time reporting on widespread rape and other sexual violence of Palestinian male and female prisoners by Israeli authorities, and the article is now published. The assault victims were warned not to give speak of what they endured -- they were sometimes told they would be killed or raped if they gave interviews -- but they found the courage to do so. One man described being raped three times in a single day in Israeli prison, the third time after he tried to protest. A young woman said the guards would come in at the beginning of each shift and strip her naked and abuse her. Another reported that she was shown photos of herself being raped and warned they would be released unless she cooperated with Israeli intelligence. Even three children who had been detained told me they had been sexually abused. Look, whatever our position on the Middle East, we should be able to agree on being anti-rape. Sexual assaults were horrific when Israeli women were targeted on Oct. 7, and they're equally horrific when Israeli authorities use them against Palestinians day after day after day. We should be able to find common ground in opposing rape. Here's a gift link to the article: https://t.co/aMMHId49OO
Nice to have an opportunity to acknowledge some of my teachers and mentors and get into my “original story” a bit.
https://t.co/NU1szcNtPz
While the new NYC buffer zone hasn’t yet gone into effect, there’s an existing NY criminal statute that @NYPDPC can instruct NYPD (@NYPDnews) to deploy to combat this evening’s planned disruption outside Park East Synagogue by the October 7-supporting PAL Awda group: NY Penal Law § 240.21 (Disruption or disturbance of a religious service, funeral, burial or memorial service):
“A person is guilty of disruption or disturbance of a religious service…when he or she makes unreasonable noise or disturbance while at a lawfully assembled religious service…or within three hundred feet thereof, with intent to cause annoyance or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof.”
Disruption or disturbance of a religious service is a class A misdemeanor.
While the defenders of the last 2.5 years of masked disturbances in NYC will claim that this criminal statute is unconstitutional, this argument has already been rejected in People v. Morrisey, 614 N.Y.S.2d 686 (N.Y. City Ct. 1994), which upheld multiple convictions for disturbing an event at St. Paul the Apostle Church on West 59th Street.
The court explained:
“The Supreme Court has explicitly held that an individual may not exercise his or her own constitutional rights and in this process infringe on the constitutional rights of others. Further, the Court has held that an individual may not exercise claimed First Amendment rights at any place or at any time…
The defendants are charged with engaging in conduct which interfered with the religious service being conducted at St. Paul the Apostle Church. It is acknowledged by the defendants that their actions were intended as ‘an attempt to prevent the sacrilege of a Mass.’ Clearly, the defendants’ conduct, if as alleged, infringed on the rights of those persons in attendance who were exercising their freedom of religion and who were participating in a Mass. The court finds that conduct proscribed by the challenged statute is not intended to punish the exercise of religion but it is rather intended to protect the rights of persons to exercise their own religious beliefs without impermissible interference…
The complaint alleges considerable disruptive conduct by the defendants, including that the defendants blocked the way of the priest and the deacon at the beginning of the service, keeping them from proceeding to the altar; defendant McDaniel shouted several things that did not constitute a prayer of any type at the priest; defendant Morrisey attempted to seize a microphone from the lectern; defendant Morrisey, with his arm around the neck of the priest, pulled at the priest as defendant Morrisey attempted to grab the microphone from the priest... Penal Law § 240.21 prohibits [this] conduct intended to cause annoyance or alarm at a religious service.
[T]he State has a justifiable interest in protecting the rights of those who wish to exercise their freedom of religion over the interest of those individuals who intend to infringe these First Amendment rights.”
Anti-Zionist group PAL-Awda plans to protest the "Great Israel Real Estate Event" tonight at Park East Synagogue. Comes after council passed a bill further regulating protests outside houses of worship (but with a 90-day delay, so bill's not in effect yet)
https://t.co/jmHduh1lKJ
Brilliantly explained — anti-Zionism is a hate movement.
Some people seem to think freedom of speech protects their 'right' to bully and intimidate others. It does not.
Hard-hitting interview by Hamodia of the leadership of Maimonides Hospital about the proposed H+H merger. And an exclusive: “Hospital Claims Doctors On Board, Leaked Recording Shows Otherwise.”
An excerpt: “In the interview that appears on these pages, Dr. John Marshall, Chief Medical Officer of Maimonides Medical Center, assured readers that “the physicians are staying,” while Dr. Mitchell Katz, President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals [H+H], stated flatly that “the doctors are on board.” But at an internal town hall meeting held the same week—a recording of which was obtained by Hamodia—their remarks to their own medical staff painted a very different picture.
Over the course of nearly two hours, Maimonides physicians asked pointed, unresolved questions about the financial assumptions underlying the deal, pressed for answers about what would happen to their contracts after 250 days (when [H+H] will, according to information shared during the town hall meeting, no longer guarantee the fulfillment of contracts), and heard Dr. Marshall himself say, when asked point-blank whether the transaction was certain: “So few things in life are certain.”
In the Hamodia interview, Dr. Mitchell Katz, President and CEO of [H+H], stated that “the doctors are on board.” Dr. Marshall was more expansive: “I’ve had conversations with literally almost all of them personally,” he said, adding that physician fears about the merger were “unfounded” and that “all the evidence we’ve had so far is that the physicians are going to stay.”
The town hall recording tells a starkly differently story. Physician after physician rose to pose questions that went to the heart of the transaction—questions that, in several cases, Marshall and Katz acknowledged they could not fully answer.
One doctor challenged the financial projections directly: “As long as I’ve been employed here, there’s been a three, four, $500 million deficit that was closed at the end of the year by state funding. So going forward, if the assumptions about the revenue aren’t what we think they’re going to be, how do those get closed?”
Another raised concerns about the reliability of the improved Medicaid reimbursement rates that form the central pillar of the deal’s financial case: “The improved Medicaid payments are not guaranteed. It’s something that we’re kind of hoping for, but it goes from year to year, and it’s not necessarily going to continue forward. And in Crain’s, there was recently an article about the finances of HHC that they’re also somewhat limited. So the question is, with all these points, where do we really stand?”
A third physician, reflecting on years of unimplemented strategic planning at the hospital, asked how governance and decision-making would actually work under the new structure: “We’ve spent years and years on strategic planning committees where nothing got accomplished. How are those decisions going to be made? How are we going to be involved in that?”
Full story below.
![AkivaShapiro's tweet photo. Hard-hitting interview by Hamodia of the leadership of Maimonides Hospital about the proposed H+H merger. And an exclusive: “Hospital Claims Doctors On Board, Leaked Recording Shows Otherwise.”
An excerpt: “In the interview that appears on these pages, Dr. John Marshall, Chief Medical Officer of Maimonides Medical Center, assured readers that “the physicians are staying,” while Dr. Mitchell Katz, President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals [H+H], stated flatly that “the doctors are on board.” But at an internal town hall meeting held the same week—a recording of which was obtained by Hamodia—their remarks to their own medical staff painted a very different picture.
Over the course of nearly two hours, Maimonides physicians asked pointed, unresolved questions about the financial assumptions underlying the deal, pressed for answers about what would happen to their contracts after 250 days (when [H+H] will, according to information shared during the town hall meeting, no longer guarantee the fulfillment of contracts), and heard Dr. Marshall himself say, when asked point-blank whether the transaction was certain: “So few things in life are certain.”
In the Hamodia interview, Dr. Mitchell Katz, President and CEO of [H+H], stated that “the doctors are on board.” Dr. Marshall was more expansive: “I’ve had conversations with literally almost all of them personally,” he said, adding that physician fears about the merger were “unfounded” and that “all the evidence we’ve had so far is that the physicians are going to stay.”
The town hall recording tells a starkly differently story. Physician after physician rose to pose questions that went to the heart of the transaction—questions that, in several cases, Marshall and Katz acknowledged they could not fully answer.
One doctor challenged the financial projections directly: “As long as I’ve been employed here, there’s been a three, four, $500 million deficit that was closed at the end of the year by state funding. So going forward, if the assumptions about the revenue aren’t what we think they’re going to be, how do those get closed?”
Another raised concerns about the reliability of the improved Medicaid reimbursement rates that form the central pillar of the deal’s financial case: “The improved Medicaid payments are not guaranteed. It’s something that we’re kind of hoping for, but it goes from year to year, and it’s not necessarily going to continue forward. And in Crain’s, there was recently an article about the finances of HHC that they’re also somewhat limited. So the question is, with all these points, where do we really stand?”
A third physician, reflecting on years of unimplemented strategic planning at the hospital, asked how governance and decision-making would actually work under the new structure: “We’ve spent years and years on strategic planning committees where nothing got accomplished. How are those decisions going to be made? How are we going to be involved in that?”
Full story below.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HHLDlehW0AAKrKZ.jpg)
I had a great time back at @ColumbiaLaw talking sports and betting law, regulation of gaming in New York, and litigation in these spaces.
One takeaway: prediction markets are where much of the action is these days. Or at least where the most interesting topics of conversation are found, from whether it should be illegal to make a market for when a particular person will die to how “insider trading” should work in these markets to whether they are gambling at all.
Another: what the people want, the people usually get. You can’t decouple law from politics from culture. The growing legalization over the past decade of mobile fantasy sports, then sports betting, and now wagering on literally anything make this clear. A tsunami of popularity will quickly overtake whatever legal barriers regulators initially erect.
Thank you Columbia Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Society for the invite and Emanuella N. Rozenfeld for the excellent moderating.
Thanks Benjamin Freeman and Brad Fischer for the sharp conversation.
BREAKING: A failed Palestinian suicde bomber released as part of an October 7 Massacre hostage ransom spoke remotely to University of California, Berkeley students on Monday at an event held in one of the university's classrooms.
@AmericanLawyer called him a litigator with "a knack for getting the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court. Quickly." We're thrilled to welcome @AkivaShapiro to @HoltzmanVogel as a litigation partner and #NewYork office managing partner.
https://t.co/xYmI1A48rL
Big news in the Maimonides battle—NYAG wisely requires judicial scrutiny of the transaction and rejects efforts to have it rubberstamped.
“The Not-for-Profit Corporation Law exists to ensure that the public interest is protected before a charitable institution’s assets are handed over,” said Akiva Shapiro of Gibson Dunn, co-counsel for the petitioners. “The law requires both judicial and Public Health Council scrutiny of a transfer of this magnitude, and the communities that depend on Maimonides for their medical care deserve nothing less.”
Rabbi Prof. aaron twerski opines: Rescue Maimonides, Don’t Surrender It.
I’m honored to represent Rabbi Prof. Twerski—distinguished professor at Brooklyn Law School, preeminent tort law scholar, and longtime Maimonides Trustee—and other Maimonides trustees in this dispute.
Rabbi Prof. aaron twerski opines: Rescue Maimonides, Don’t Surrender It.
I’m honored to represent Rabbi Prof. Twerski—distinguished professor at Brooklyn Law School, preeminent tort law scholar, and longtime Maimonides Trustee—and other Maimonides trustees in this dispute.
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