New York state politicians have been discussing a Medicare for All-type health insurance system for nearly 30 years. But never before has the New York Health Act seemed so achievable as it does today, politicians said at a forum on Monday.
State Senator Robert Jackson, who represents parts of the Upper West Side, along with Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill, hosted a town hall at the West End Collegiate Church on 77th Street on Monday to discuss the proposed bill with the community. Jackson was joined by Assemblymembers Richard Gottfried and Linda Rosenthal, State Senator Gustavo Rivera, and Carlyn Cowen, chief policy and public affairs officer for the Chinese-American Planning Council. Assemblyman Gottfried and Senator Rivera both chair the health committees in their respective chambers of the legislature. They were joined by several community members and healthcare professionals who testified on the urgent need for universal healthcare.
NYHA would provide all 20 million New Yorkers with the same services currently provided by Medicare, but without copays and deductibles. “It would cover all 20 million of us regardless of age, or income, or immigration status, or anything else,” Gottfried said. In addition to covering primary care, it would also cover things like prescription fees, dental, and long-term care – going far beyond what most plans on the healthcare marketplace offer. NYHA would also eliminate restricted provider networks, allowing patients to choose which doctor they want to see without having to worry about out-of-network charges….
A livestream of the town hall can be found at Senator Jackson’s Twitter feed (@SenatorRJackson). If you have any questions about NYHA, the senator will be hosting another town hall on November 12, at the Y.M. & Y.W.H.A. at 54 Nagle Ave.
Rachel Madley, 24, had just entered high school when her doctor diagnosed her with Type 1 diabetes. From that point on, her life became a living nightmare. Her parents had to go into debt to afford her treatment. More egregiously, she constantly had to fight with her insurance company to get the medicine she needed.
She recalled one particular incident in college when she risked going a weekend without insulin – which, as a diabetic, is life-threatening.
“I started the process a few weeks before so I could be sure that I would get insulin,” recalled Madley. “My insurance company either denied it multiple times or tried to charge me the full price for it. I went to the pharmacy to try and get a refill, and it was not going through with my insurance, or it was showing up with a $400 out-of-pocket cost. So I called my insurance company, and they were closed for a three-day weekend. I panicked; I didn’t know what to do. But luckily, my pharmacist saw how stressed I was, and she actually gave me the insulin at no charge until we could figure things out.
What the experience taught me is that insurance companies value profit over my life, and over everyone’s life” ….
While Democrats running for president debate whether to enact Medicare for All, state-level politicians are working to rally support for a bill that would create a single-payer system in New York state.
The New York Health Act would transform health care in the state, so that it would be paid for by government sources, including state and federal tax dollars and new payroll taxes. It would eliminate premiums, deductibles, co-pays and out-of-network charges.
On Monday, State Senator Robert Jackson will hold a forum on the act with the bill’s sponsors, Assemblymember Dick Gottfried and State Senator Gustavo Rivera, as well as Assembly member Linda Rosenthal and Carlyn Cowen from the Chinese-American Planning Council.
It starts at 6 p.m. Monday at the West End Collegiate Church, 245 W. 77th St. between Broadway and West End Avenue. You can RSVP on Eventbrite here.
There’s more info on the act here, and the payment breakdown is below.
Another year, the same problem.
That’s why Barbara Estrin and many others braved the early December cold to rally on city hall’s steps on Dec. 3. It was the second time members of Not 62: The Campaign for a Healthy Bronx, have spoken out for better health care in the borough.
Members like Estrin weren’t asking for anything outlandish or unrealistic from the city. Instead, they asked that the Bronx have what the other four boroughs have — equitable health care.
Each year, the University of Wisconsin and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ranks the country’s more than 3,000 counties based on how healthy their populations are. It studies how factors like length and quality of life, health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic factors, and physical environment have profound effects depending on geography.
Bronx County — as it has since the study began in 2010 — ranked dead last out of New York’s 62 counties….
Mr. Sweeney, you’re right: “Whoever pays the piper calls the tune.” Today, for-profit health insurance “calls the tune,” dictating to doctors, undermining American health care.
Recently, Medical Economics described physicians “in a tug-of-war between what is right for their patients” and corporate-run insurance: “I or my staff members spend the majority of our weeks on the phone and doing paperwork (often denied, and re-sent, having to do again) on our patients’ behalf.”
It’s not “baloney.”
For-profit insurance devours half the doctor’s week. The advocates you decry want our medical practitioners — internists, dentists, ENTs, therapists, etc. — to give (and get) evidence-based health care without interfering middlemen stealing time, increasing costs, and harming our health.
Someday, you’ll be eligible for Medicare. Will you refuse it because it socializes risk of medical catastrophe? Will you refuse firefighters — socialized risk of our home burning? Do you refuse police assistance — socialized risk against crime?
They filled the sidewalk in front of the Bronx Library Center in Fordham last week, carrying signs and chanting their displeasure with the current health coverage system in the state.
“What do we want? Health care! When do we want it? Now!”
That was the scene outside of the latest hearing on the proposed New York Health Act led by state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, taking place in a borough that is known as New York’s unhealthiest.
The megaphone-enhanced chants could be heard from East Kingsbridge Road to inside the library, where Rivera and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried were set to host the 10-hour hearing.
“I have been working on this bill for 27 years,” Gottfriend said. “Except for people whose job it is to defend the current system, nobody has ever told me that they love their health coverage, or they love their deductibles, or co-pays and their restricted provider networks.”
That bill, the New York Health Act, shares similarities with Medicare and Canada’s current health care system. But lawmakers and advocates pushing this single-payer option through says what they’ve put together is better....
The big news concerning the state of health care in New York this week came from The Wall Street Journal which reported that “New Yorkers are waiting hours and lining up down the street to tell state legislators the same refrain: fix health care.” The crowds are showing up to testify as legislators seek information about “the New York Health Act, which would establish universal, guaranteed health care across the state with a single-payer plan.” as the Journal reported.
Where do legislators get the idea that this is a state concern and should not be left to private enterprise or the federal government? From the state Constitution, that’s where.
As the bill’s sponsors point out, the Constitution holds that “The protection and promotion of the health of the inhabitants of the state are matters of public concern and provision therefor shall be made by the state and by such of its subdivisions and in such manner, and by such means as the legislature shall from time to time determine.”
The plan being considered at these legislative hearings around the state starts by assuming that federal and state funds now used to provide health care would be available to the new program, a logical approach but one that might have to overcome the kinds of political objections that have greeted Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and any other attempt to provide a broad-based system similar to the ones offered in every other developed nation, places where health outcomes are better than ours as is access to all sorts of health care and patient satisfaction. After all, the only category in which the United States leads the world when it comes to health care is cost....
The big news concerning the state of health care in New York this week came from The Wall Street Journal which reported that “New Yorkers are waiting hours and lining up down the street to tell state legislators the same refrain: fix health care.” The crowds are showing up to testify as legislators seek information about “the New York Health Act, which would establish universal, guaranteed health care across the state with a single-payer plan.” as the Journal reported.
Where do legislators get the idea that this is a state concern and should not be left to private enterprise or the federal government? From the state Constitution, that’s where.
As the bill’s sponsors point out, the Constitution holds that “The protection and promotion of the health of the inhabitants of the state are matters of public concern and provision therefor shall be made by the state and by such of its subdivisions and in such manner, and by such means as the legislature shall from time to time determine.”
The plan being considered at these legislative hearings around the state starts by assuming that federal and state funds now used to provide health care would be available to the new program, a logical approach but one that might have to overcome the kinds of political objections that have greeted Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and any other attempt to provide a broad-based system similar to the ones offered in every other developed nation, places where health outcomes are better than ours as is access to all sorts of health care and patient satisfaction. After all, the only category in which the United States leads the world when it comes to health care is cost....
New Yorkers are waiting hours and lining up down the street to tell state legislators the same refrain: fix health care.
Workers, physicians, nurses, parents, business owners, the elderly and the infirm have been testifying at hearings around the state about the New York Health Act, which would establish universal, guaranteed health care across the state with a single-payer plan. During the most recent forum, at a public library in the Bronx last week, people filled a 150-seat auditorium to hear testimony that ultimately ended when the library closed for the day.
Allison Marotta, a 25-year-old New Yorker with Type 1 diabetes, said that in a few weeks she will no longer be carried under her parents’ insurance. She isn’t eligible for Medicaid and said she can’t afford a state-sponsored program. Her monthly care costs will exceed $2,000 a month without insurance for insulin alone, with supplies and doctor’s appointments quadrupling that number, she said.
“I will not be able to afford this,” Ms. Marotta said through tears. “After my 26th birthday I will no longer have access to my team of medical doctors and I will begin to ration insulin and medical supplies.”
Advocates hope that the onslaught of personal and painful stories shared during the hearings—three have happened so far and at least one more is expected—will build momentum to pass the legislation. They say the plan would provide New Yorkers with complete health coverage without deductibles, copays or out-of-network charges.
Versions of the Health Act have previously been taken up and passed by the Assembly, which has long been dominated by Democrats, but there was no vote on the bill during this year’s session—the first in a decade during which Democrats also controlled the state Senate.
During a press conference before the Bronx hearing, state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, chair of the senate’s health committee, said this year will be different. The Health Act, he said, will be a “central part” of the conversation of the upcoming legislative session, which begins in January.
“We know that health care is something that we all struggle with,” he said. “And now we are saying that we have a solution to deal with that in the state of New York.”
Still, there are political roadblocks at the Capitol in Albany. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat from Yonkers, hasn’t embraced the bill, as she attempts to balance the needs of moderate Democratic senators from suburban areas—whose electoral victories helped propel the party into the majority—with those of more liberal members who support the bill.
In a statement, Ms. Stewart-Cousins committed to discussing the bill, and said “Improving our broken health-care system is a Senate Democratic priority and a major concern.” A spokesman for Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Democrat from the Bronx, said he would discuss the issue with his members.
State Sen. Patrick Gallivan, a Republican and ranking member of the Senate’s Health Committee, has called the Health Act highly impractical. “No taxpayer-funded program can afford unlimited and unrestricted health care,” Mr. Gallivan said earlier this month.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said he wants to expand access to health insurance, but has thrown cold water on the Health Act. The governor has questioned whether a single-payer system could exist on a state scale as opposed to a national one, and said he doesn’t believe the federal government would give the necessary Medicaid waivers to implement such a bill.
Leanne Politi, a spokeswoman for the Realities of Single Payer, a coalition of health insurance and business groups that supports universal coverage but not a single-payer system, said the testimony and questions raised at the public hearings has only reinforced members’ opposition to a statewide, government-run single-payer system. Many people currently uninsured are eligible for low or no-cost health coverage right now.
“State lawmakers should explore other ways to get the remaining individuals covered as well as addressing issues which will lower the costs of care making coverage more affordable,” said Ms. Politi. “Let’s fix what is broken instead of throwing out the entire system.”
Bronx resident Helene Reed explained to lawmakers at last week’s hearing how two children she cares for lost health insurance, despite qualifying for a state program.
Andrew P. Raia, a Republican assembly member from Long Island, said the problems they are encountering are with the current Medicaid system.
“Reach out to your state legislators, let them be your advocate,” Mr. Raia said.
“And then what happens?” asked Ms. Reed. “Tell me, what can they do to help me?”
“I would reach out to your state representatives,” said Mr. Raia, “and see if they can help you cut through the red tape.”
As a Vermont health care activist, I enjoy seeing The Riverdale Presspop up on my alerts: Both for the frequency of your supportive coverage, and your insightful local contributors.
When I saw your editorial, I needed to respond, despite not being a Bronx resident. “The previous attempt — in Vermont — was a disaster” needs correction, and I hope this is OK with the editors.
Please allow me to offer some history as I was in the thick of that fierce battle.
No single-payer plan ever materialized. When Vermont passed its historic Act 48 mandating that health care should be a public good for all Vermonters, we were proud of our state legislature, taking the initiative to lead a health care revolution in America....
Democratic candidates for president want to overhaul health care. But who will pay for it? That was the question during last night’s fourth primary debate, which featured 12 candidates on one stage vying for attention. But the discussion around health care may have resulted in more questions than answers. A lot of the details are murky, but right now, it looks like government-sponsored health care wouldn’t dramatically increase your out-of-pocket costs—it would actually lower what you pay for care.
A portion of the night focused on Medicare for All, the general idea that the government should run the United States health care system. There are several ideas for doing it, but the overall goal is that everyone would get some level of insurance for free....
A 2018 Vox analysisof data from the New York Health Act found that new taxes levied to pay for health care would probably replace the same amount of money spent on health care premiums, whether that cost is covered by you or your employer....
Jenny Brown’s new book Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now, the latest in the Jacobin Seriespublished by Verso, draws on decadesof history and organizing experience to explain how we can win this fight over women’s reproductive labor.
Brown, also author of Birth Strike(PM Press, 2019), has organized with National Women’s Liberation, Gainesville Women’s Liberation and Redstockings. She spoke with Jacobin’s Liza Featherstone at New York’s Strand Bookstore on October 10. A Kickstarter to raise funds for the launch of Without Apology can be found here....
So, National Women’s Liberation has its roots in Redstockings, in those sixties radical movements, and we are trying to continue that tradition. We teach classes, we put out books, we put out information, but we’re also organizers. We’re hoping to create a study and action guide to go with this book.
It’s now easy to do a self-managed abortion, with pills. There are all kinds of regulations and restrictions around it. These are completely unnecessary. And why is it only doctors in most states who can provide abortions? This is a choke point that has been used against us — and Lucinda Cisler predicted that it would be. Some states have made it possible for other practitioners to provide abortions. They have just as good outcomes. It’s fine. So we need to make it so that anybody who’s a trained practitioner can provide an abortion. We need to not just try to keep these abortion bans from coming down the pike, but really expand our rights.
We also have done a lot of organizing around national health insurance. For example, the New York Health Act, which is basically statewide single payer. Everybody would be covered, and it includes abortion. Rather than this continual forty-year fight to get rid of the Hyde Amendment, which would still mean that you’d have to be on Medicaid to get your abortion funded — that leaves a whole lot of people out. What we really need is expanded, improved Medicare for all that coversabortion and birth control. We think that is the way to go. In fact, Redstockings pioneered this. In 1989 they changed their call for “free abortion on demand” to “free abortion on demand through a national health system.” We really need to win national health care....
Senate and Assembly Health Committee Chairs Gustavo Rivera and Richard Gottfried will take testimony to examine the New York Health Act. This is part of a series of hearings on this topic to gather input from around the state.
Cost remains a primary obstacle to accessing healthcare whether an individual is insured, underinsured or uninsured and those that are able to access healthcare are often left with significant debt. The New York Health Act would replace traditional health insurance coverage and public health coverage programs with comprehensive single-payer health coverage, including long-term care, for all New Yorkers. The program would be publicly funded, including existing federal support for Medicaid and Medicare. New Yorkers would no longer have to pay premiums, deductibles, copays, out-of-network charges or have limited provider networks.
Watch Archived Video Here and Find Written Testimony Submitted
October 23, 2019
Labor leaders, nurses and caregivers came together Wednesday and testified to the Senate and Assembly committees on health care at a public hearing.
Over 40 supporters testified. "No one should have to decide between lifesaving treatment and putting a roof over their head," said nurse Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez.
If passed, the New York Health Actwould provide comprehensive, universal health coverage for every New Yorker.
Elected officials also weighed in on what they are calling a flawed system. They say the problem with the current system is that the decisions of health care are not being made by doctors and their patients. They say they are being made by insurance companies.
The bill could pass as early as January, when legislators are back in session.
Local union leaders addressed concerns Wednesday over single-payer health care, saying it would benefit patients as well as health care workers.
They did so at a joint Senate and Assembly hearing on the New York Health Act, which was held at the Bronx Library Center.
Though arguments against the legislation, which would be funded through progressive taxation, have included that industry workers will lose their jobs or go without wage increases, union leaders said there are ways to mitigate such results.
"The members of our union see the consequences of our broken health care system every day," said Dell Smitherman, downstate political director at 1199 SEIU, who testified at the hearing. That includes people arriving at emergency departments at advanced stages of a disease because they don't have access to primary and preventive care, he said, as well as families being forced to make choices about maintaining health care coverage or paying for other necessities.
Though 1199 SEIU has a national benefit fund that provides comprehensive health insurance to its members and their families with no out-of-pocket costs, Smitherman said: "We recognize that what we have been able to win at the bargaining table is more and more rare; across the country, out-of-pocket costs for health care consumers have been rising."
In New York 1.1 million people are uninsured and more are underinsured while many pharmaceutical and medical device companies are seeing double-digit profit margins, and insurers have benefited from a congressional tax overhaul, he said.
"It is true that our benefit fund would no longer provide health insurance under a single-payer plan, like New York Health. That would require major organizational change on our part," Smitherman said. "But our leaders and our members know that winning universal health care for all and ending the suffering for far too many under the current system would be worth that disruption."
Smitherman also testified on the potential effects of single-payer health care on hospital revenues and jobs.
If reimbursement rates under a single-payer system are consistent with current public payer rates, the number of safety-net hospitals in financial distress from not having a significant number of private-payer patients would "spread much more broadly and lead to a reduction in access to care and significant job losses," he said.
Though health care jobs will be affected as the industry focus shifts toward community-based services, job loss can be lessened by teaching workers to be peer or nutrition coordinators, for instance, or community health organizers, he said.
"Our benefit fund and training fund can continue to work with the state and other partners to make sure that we transition workers into that future," he said.
Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, president of the New York State Nurses Association, testified in support of single-payer health care.
"The current system is designed to compromise care rather than provide it," Sheridan-Gonzalez said. It would be ideal to have a national plan, but there needs to be a starting point for single-payer health care, she added.
Under the New York Health Act, "we believe that we would be able to negotiate raises because we don't have to worry about health care," she said. For instance, rather than health care being an additional factor to fight for, more energy could be put toward improving salaries and working conditions, she said.
Aside from union leaders, Dr. Mitchell Katz, president and CEO of New York City Health + Hospitals, provided testimony at Wednesday's hearing, kicking off the event.
As a physician, "a single-payer system would allow me to spend more time on caring for patients and less time on filling out forms and fighting with insurance companies," Katz said.
A single-payer system would broaden health care coverage, he said, and help to reduce the administrative burden felt by safety-net hospitals.
For all the support, however, single-payer health care is met with strong criticism.
An organization called the Realities of Single Payer, which counts the state Health Plan Association among its members, said in a statement issued Wednesday that 150,000 workers would lose their jobs should the legislation be implemented, having a "ripple effect on local economies."
"The members of the Realities coalition are supportive of adopting ways to make coverage more affordable and to get every single New Yorker covered," the coalition said. "Let's fix what is broken instead of blowing up the entire system and replacing it with an even more expensive, experimental, government-run system."
Assembly Member Richard Gottfried (D-Chelsea, Midtown) will be holding a press conference on his New York Health Act today.
The New York Health Act, which Gottfried is sponsoring, would establish universal single-payer health coverage for all New Yorkers. If passed, New Yorkers would no longer have to pay premiums, co-pays or out-of-network charges.
This hearing is the third in a series of statewide hearings on the Assembly bill.
The event will take place today at 9:30 a.m. at the Bronx Library Center, 310 East Kingsbridge Road.
The Assembly and Senate Standing health committees hold their third joint public hearing in the Bronx today on The New York Health Act.
SPONSORS OPTIMISTIC ABOUT NEW YORK HEALTH ACT’S CHANCES IN 2020 — POLITICO’s Shannon Young: New York Democrats are forging ahead with their proposal to transform the state’s health care systeminto a single-payer model even as the party's presidential candidates debate their own plans for reform. The Assembly and Senate health committees will hold their third and penultimate joint public hearing Wednesday on The New York Health Act, legislation NY A5248 (19R) /NY S3577 (19R) that seeks to establish comprehensive single-payer health coveragefor all New Yorkers. The meeting, set to begin at 10 a.m. at the Bronx Library Center, comes less than two weeks after the committees held a joint public hearing in Rochester, signaling momentum on the issue which had largely stalled since lawmakers considered it in May.
Two years ago, in these very pages, I shared something deeply personal that before that was only really known by family members and people close to me.
I’m in remission from a medical condition known as trigeminal neuralgia. It’s a condition that affects the trigeminal nerve, a facial nerve that connects the brain with the top, middle and bottom part of our face.
When it flares up and I suffer an “attack,” it’s one of the most intense pains I could imagine anyone ever feeling, and it can last for hours. The best way to describe it is someone stabbing me in the face with a knife, pulling it out, and then doing it again. And again. And again.
It’s a condition so painful and potentially debilitating, it’s one of a handful of conditions that have earned the moniker of “the suicide disease.”
I’m one of the lucky ones, however. My TN is atypical....
It was very encouraging to read State Sen. Patrick Gallivan traveled to Canada on a two-day fact-finding trek with the purpose of collecting information on their single-payer health care system. I hope more senators will follow his lead.
However, I disagree with his rejection of single payer.
As a practicing physician, my colleagues and I hear on a daily basis how fed up our patients are with escalating co-pays, premiums, co-insurances, deductibles and drug prices. We all have patients that do not follow through on treatments due to excessive out-of-pocket expenses. Many insurance companies are now unable to afford the high cost of medications and have begun making partial payment to suppliers in order to get them. Another backbreaker to Americans, and probably unknown to State Sen. Gallivan, is this little-known fact: At the time of retirement most will need $230,000 to $250,000 in savings for their health care. Yes, up to $250,000.
Of course, they’ll also need money for food, clothing, utilities, etc. How much do Canadians need set aside in retirement for health care? Nothing....
As a society, we spend a lot of our time squabbling about the big picture — abstract, often controversial, ideas that might only impact us once or twice in our lives. Meanwhile, the issues that impact us every day — housing, transportation, education, public health and safety — are frequently pushed aside or only discussed as a societal afterthought.
For most of us, however, our daily conversation revolves around what pundits call “kitchen table” issues: Potholes which never seem to get fixed, buses which never seem to have a seat and are always late, or how overcrowded classrooms might be hurting our kids’ education.
Everybody who has met me knows that these kitchen table issues are what get me up in the morning….
Things began to unravel on the day after Christmas 2016.
I came home to my native North Carolina for the holiday, to the house my then-husband and I lived in before I got a job in New York. Midday, mom stood to stretch her legs. She fell backward in her chair, gasping for air.
Life changed for both of us forever at that moment.
In the emergency room, routine triage shifted to panic. Mom’s blood pressure was 230/190. They put her in a bed and started an IV. An army of nurses with a parade of drip bags frowned at the vital sign monitor.
A medication pulled her from the brink of a stroke. She was prepped for a chest X-ray. She resisted. We found out why. No fan of modern medicine, mom dismissed the lumps as mastitis. It was Stage 3 breast cancer.
The next few weeks were a blur. Doctors. Conflicting prognoses. Painful biopsies. Throughout, my mother — weak, worried, pale — assured me things would be OK. A good mother soothing her frightened child.
If single-payer health care is passed in New York — or anywhere else in the country, for that matter — expect the sky to fall.
That’s the clarion call of Sally Pipes, the president and chief executive of the California conservative think tank Pacific Research Institute, in an opinion piece published in The Riverdale Presslast July.
Without citing her source, Pipes warned of a country where a shortage of more than 120,000 doctors would exist — 40 percent of them citing burnout as the primary cause of them leaving the medical field, and dissuading their children from becoming doctors. That burn out, Pipes claims, is caused by “bureaucratic tasks” — something that would “smother” doctors if the government took over health care, like what’s proposed with the New York Health Act....
Joseph Tharakan began classes at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Morris Park just as the push for health care reform in New York picked up significant steam with a Democratic takeover of the state senate. Under a single-payer system, his life as a medical doctor will likely be far different than his predecessors — along with the compensation that comes with it.
“I’m not worried at all,” said Tharakan, a product of Riverdale and the Bronx High School of Science. “In fact, I think it’s a great idea. The passage of the New York Health Act would be fantastic.”
And he’s not alone....
Health care in the United States is a $3.5 trillion industry, with New York — at a cost of more than $10,725 per person, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — making up more than $163 billion of those costs.
From pretty much the beginning, health care is something Americans have treated as a commodity. We receive services, and we pay for those services.
As medicine grew more complex, costs became more and more difficult to handle. Late in the 19th century, what would become the modern medical insurance industry was born. However, it wouldn’t be until the 1920s that such offerings became more widely available.
Unless you’ve lived outside the country for any extended period of time, the only health care we have known is one that exists through our health insurance. We pay out premiums on a regular basis, and when it comes time to cash in to receive those services, many times we have to pay even more out of pocket, typically up to some pretty sizeable caps....
Universal health care isn’t a new concept. The first modern iteration of such a system was first implemented in 1883 by Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck in the country that later became Germany.
The United Kingdom passed its own legislation in 1911 to cover primary care of the working class — about a third of the country’s population. Several European countries followed suit in the 1930s, with many of them — including the United Kingdom — adopting a universal coverage model over the next 20 years.
While each country with universal health care employ different administrative models, tax revenue is the common funding denominator. The U.K. government directly runs its health care system, while others in places like Germany, France and Japan use a two-payer system mixing both private and public funds. In some countries like Belgium and the Netherlands, a mixture of private insurance and government-funded health care exists, but insurance companies are prohibited from denying coverage for anyone based on age or pre-existing conditions....
Dr. Phil Schneider likes to keep it simple.
Walking into the speech pathologist’s Whitehall clinic, patients generally don’t find much more than a small sparsely decorated waiting area, leading to an office dominated by Schneider’s desk, with a big window facing Independence Avenue.
Despite running a number of similar offices throughout the city — and even a pair in Israel — Schneider runs his practice without the standard office staff one might expect. Because of that, Schneider tends to deal with all his own paperwork, most of which deals directly with health insurance companies.
Receiving standard health care can be challenging enough through such insurance. When it comes to specialists like Schneider, it’s an everyday uphill battle that eats more and more of his time....
By Jack Watson, Oct 10, 2019
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Legislators from the New York State Senate and Assembly gathered Thursday at University of Rochester to hear testimony for the New York Health Act, a bill that aims to bring single-payer health care to the state.
The bill would create a health care system operated by New York State, at a cost one study from the RAND Corporation estimates at $130 billion, which factors in the new combined payroll and non-payroll tax introduced by the bill.
State Assemblyman Harry Bronson from the 138th district, as well as State Senator Gustavo Rivera and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, both from New York City, spoke in support of the bill.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — People came out to show support for universal healthcare in New York.
Advocates representing state providers, nurses, patients, businesses, and caregivers rallied on Thursday in front of the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester.
The rally came after the public hearing on the New York Health Act. The act would provide complete health coverage without deductibles, co-pays, restricted provider networks, or out-of-network charges....
“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” Joe Biden declared on the day that General Motors (already holding out for higher medical co-pays and deductibles in the new contract) cut strikers’ health insurance, forcing the union to pay for COBRA. On Sept. 26, GM restored worker health benefits, but the issue of employer-based insurance remains.
Although the strike might be settled by the time this letter is printed, the truth is GM workers are not alone: 28 percent of people on an employer plan will not be on that same plan one year later.
You like your employer health plan? You better cross your fingers, because 1-in-4 people on employer plans will come off their plan in the next 12 months.
The GM workers’ strike changes the stance of unions. Workers are not only striking for consistent health benefits, they are also striking against the “gig economy,” which puts some GM workers outside the benefit package altogether. By 2020, the number of self-employed or part-time employees is expected to reach 42 million. And the autoworkers union is fighting to make more workers full-time....
Members of the New York State Legislature held a schedule hearing today (October 10) where they took testimony on the potential enactment of the New York Health Act.
The proposed legislation would replace traditional health insurance and public health coverage programs with a comprehensive single-payer system for all New Yorkers.
Such a program would be publicly funded and include existing federal support for Medicaid and Medicare.
Residents would no longer have to pay premiums, deductibles, copays, out-of-network charges or have limited provider networks....