Isn’t this exactly what Schumer et al claimed to be ending with ObamaCare?

In September 2021, doctors were alerted that Kenneth G. Langone, whose donations to the university’s hospital system had led it to be renamed in his honor, was en route. The octogenarian had stomach pain, and Room 20 was kept empty for him, medical workers said. Upon his arrival, Mr. Langone was whisked into the room, treated for a bacterial infection and sent home.

The next spring, Senator Chuck Schumer accompanied his wife, who had a fever and was short of breath, to the emergency room. As sicker patients were treated in the hallway, the couple were ushered into Room 20, where they received expedited Covid-19 tests, according to workers who witnessed the scene. The tests came back negative.

NYU Langone denies putting V.I.P.s first, but 33 medical workers told The New York Times that they had seen such patients receive preferential treatment in Room 20, one of the largest private spaces in the department. One doctor was surprised to find an orthopedic specialist in the room awaiting a senior hospital executive’s mother with hip pain. Another described an older hospital trustee who was taken to Room 20 when he was short of breath after exercising.

The privileged treatment is part of a broader pattern, a Times investigation found.

Egalitarianism for thee, not for we. Apparently, Schumer’s progressivism only goes so far. When the pandemic rubber hits the health-care system road, Schumer seems happy to use elite status to get a higher level of medical attention than the hoi polloi.

In the meantime …

But at NYU, poor people sometimes struggle to be seen. For example, ambulance workers said nurses in the emergency room routinely discouraged them from dropping off homeless or intoxicated patients. Instead, they were often shuttled to nearby Bellevue, a strained public hospital that primarily treats the poor.

So at NYU Langone and in New York’s political system, money talks and bull**** walks … to Bellevue.

For its part, NYU Langone strenuously denies the claims. Its attorney claims that the whistleblowing is in retaliation for adverse hiring and promotion decisions. The notations on patient records showing VIP and/or friends-and-family status are routine markings that can be found at many hospitals, its chief of operations told the Times, and that those were used to expedite visits to patients from relatives and friends.

“Dozens of doctors and other emergency room staff said that, when it came to many V.I.P.s, that was simply not true,” the NYT added. Furthermore, the records themselves apparently demonstrate the disparity in service provided to VIPs generally, but especially the hospital’s big-time donors. NYU Langone has a special process for their admission and processing that belies the denials from their management:

Trustees can use a dedicated phone number — the Trustee Access Line — to alert the hospital they are coming. Administrators then call, text and send messages notifying doctors that a high-priority patient is en route, according to 30 doctors. Doctors said that even when those messages did not explicitly seek priority treatment, that was how they were interpreted.

“Just a heads up that a VIP/trustee is coming to the ED per notification from the Dean’s office and to keep an eye out for her,” one doctor wrote in an electronic chat in August 2021, referring to the emergency department. The Times reviewed a screenshot of the exchange. …

And emergency room workers at several elite academic medical centers said in interviews that, as at NYU, administrators sometimes requested expedited treatment for well-connected patients.

Of course it sends that signal. That’s the clear intent. The hospital wouldn’t have a “Trustee Access Line” in the first place for any other purpose. If they get the same treatment as everyone else in the ER, the hospital would expect them to show up in the ER like everyone else, too. What other reason would donors get a special alert number for an ER heads-up other than to alert the staff to their presence, issue, and to expedite their treatment?

With that said, there’s at least a rational motive behind the VIP treatment given to big-ticket donors:

“The hospitals are acting as businesses,” said Dr. Renee Hsia, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who researches emergency room care. “They can often garner much more revenue from these patients that are huge donors.”

Fair enough, and NYU Langone has thrived on its non-profit status and big-ticket donors. That does pay for a lot of other services at the hospital. Should that not be a consideration? Perhaps, but that comes pretty close to the “concierge service” model of health care that ObamaCare discourages and penalized, until the mandate penalty finally got repealed. It also entirely contradicts the ObamaCare model’s claims of egalitarianism in access to health care resources, a point made even more obvious by the ObamaCare advocates who took advantage of the VIP services at NYU Langone.

And that means that money still talks for Democrats, especially in New York, despite all of the bull**** on parade in their speeches and policies.