Dozens of Bronx residents turned out Saturday for a town hall meeting in the Concourse to discuss what they believe to be discrimination in the city's private health care system.

Bronx Health REACH, a health care advocacy organization, claims private hospitals are biased against patients based on the level of their health care coverage.

They also say publicly-insured New Yorkers on Medicaid or those who are otherwise uninsured are steered into clinic systems by hospitals, while privately-insured patients get faculty physicians and sometimes better treatment.

"If you look at the statistics of who's on Medicaid and who is uninsured in New York, it's disproportionately people of color, whereas privately insured patients tend to be disproportionately white," said Nisha Agarwal of New York Lawyers for Public Interest. "So when you're steering patients based on insurance, you're effectively creating a de facto segregation based on race."

Bronx Health REACH says the practice is illegal and has a lawsuit pending against three area private hospitals -- Montefiore, NewYork-Presbyterian and Mount Sinai.

The Greater New York Hospital Association, which represents the hospitals, said on Saturday the claims are misguided and that clinics have been set up because many doctors simply do not accept low reimbursement insurance like Medicaid.