The wealthy trustees of some of New York’s finest private hospitals — Columbia-Presbyterian, Beth Israel, Lenox Hill, Weill-Cornell, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Mt. Sinai, NYU, St. Luke’s Roosevelt — might be surprised that their donations are funding a lobbying campaign for tax increases. Yet, that’s just what happened yesterday at Albany, as the Greater New York Hospital Association joined the health-care workers union, 1199/SEIU, in organizing a rally at the Capitol in support of raising taxes on the rich and on businesses.

The hospital association has every right to be concerned that state budget cuts may adversely affect its member hospitals. It’s one thing to argue against cuts, or to argue that other parts of the state budget than health care should be targeted. But yesterday’s rally went beyond that, endorsing a tax increase. Specifically, a “temporary” surcharge of 0.7% on incomes of more than $100,000 and another 0.7% on incomes of more than $200,000.

There was a time when signing on as a trustee of a New York hospital meant supporting cancer research and health care for the indigent elderly, not signing up for a political campaign to raise taxes. But those days, alas, seem to be over, as yesterday’s event in Albany showed.

Among those hit by the higher taxes the hospital association is advocating will no doubt be the people the association is representing — the doctors and administrators who work at the various hospitals, not to mention the trustees. If we were one of these trustees, we would be more than a little peeved at the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, Kenneth Raske.

The hospitals, as private entities, rely quite heavily on their trustees and donors. These are the exact people who the healthcare workers union, and now the trustees’ own representative, Mr. Raske, are calling on to be taxed to the hilt. This push for higher taxes will mean better hospitals — in Palm Beach, where wealthy New Yorkers will jet off to if the Empire State keeps insisting on sticking them with empire-sized tax bills.

And it’s not just the trustees who might be peeved. What about hard-working, middle-class New Yorkers in other industries, who might be breaking the $100,000 mark themselves, but who would under the Raske reasoning now find themselves taxed to subsidize a health care system where salaries for executives of “non-profit” institutions approach the $1 million mark and where paydays for malpractice lawyers also regularly clear that sum.

A joint press release from GNYHA and 1199/SEIU warns, “Huge cutbacks would force New York’s already financially fragile hospitals and nursing homes to reduce key staff, services, and access to care.” If Mr. Raske insists on arguing for higher taxes for his employers, he might worry about those staff cuts hitting a bit close to home.