Yale - New Haven Hospital tries to dodge the community's push for a community benefits agreement in its new expansion by splitting it into phases: State Sen. Martin M. Looney, D-10, said he realized there is a need for a cancer center at the hospital, which now has to shuttle patients from building to building for services. But he said considering the plan in two steps amounts to asking OHCA to approve an incomplete proposal and could undermine OCHA's ability "to determine the public need for capital expenditures and ensure that changes in services will provide a benefit prior to health care facilities spending money on major changes." Dan Livingston, an attorney who represented the Hospital Debt Justice Project, took issue with Vogel's ruling limiting the group's intervenor status. She would not consider testimony on the effect of the project on the ability of poor patients to pay for health care. "Unfortunately there is not an easy way to get the voice of uninsured before this agency. . They tend to hear almost exclusively from hospitals, radiologists, doctors," Livingston said.