With days to go before Friday’s state budget deadline, health care advocates are calling for nearly $300 million in additional funding for safety-net hospitals that treat any patient regardless of insurance coverage, ability to pay, or immigration status.

Hospital executives Dr. David Perlstein and Laray Brown joined Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall” Monday to discuss the importance of the state’s Medicaid reimbursement rate to their facilities, the state budget, and how close their hospital networks are to closing each year.

Brown is the CEO of One Brooklyn Health System, a network of medical facilities, nursing homes, and hospitals serving low income New Yorkers. Perlstein is the president and CEO of St. Barnabas Hospital Health System in the Bronx. They are both part of the New York Safety Net Hospital Coalition, an advocacy group working to bolster the hospitals serving New Yorkers excluded from the larger health care system.

Over 45% of Brown’s patients are insured through Medicaid, which pays 61 cents of every dollar the health system spends, she said. Only 20% of the network’s patients are privately insured. The disparity leads to mounting losses that impact the quality of care, Brown and Perlstein said.

“Every year we are faced with the question of whether we’re going to do layoffs, whether we’re going to have to close integral programs,” Perlstein said. Often, they look to sell real estate or end up going to the state “with our hat in hand and begging."