ALBANY-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio appeared together here to call for the federal government to pay $10 billion in requested funding for state hospitals.

The federal funding is sorely needed for two Brooklyn-based hospitals, Downtown Brooklyn's Long Island College Hospital and Bedford-Stuyvesant's Interfaith Medical Center, that are both in danger of closing. In addition, Brookdale Medical Center is also in tough fiscal condition, according to the Wall Street Journal. New York State had submitted the $10-billion funding request to the federal government in August 2012.

"The situation is critical. It's especially critical in Brooklyn. We have been holding it up for months, propping it up for months," Cuomo said at the briefing held on Monday. "Hospitals in Brooklyn will close if we wait any longer."

Neither de Blasio nor Cuomo promised to keep LICH or Interfaith Medical Center open if the federal funding arrives soon, saying that the monies would be utilized to improve outpatient care services and thereby rely less on pricier hospital-based care. "There's an excess of hospital beds in Brooklyn, but we have to transform the system so the system works overall," Cuomo said. See story in the Wall Street Journal.