The case for universal health care in NY
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[Ed. - special healthcare article in support of the NY Health Act and all the NYPAN members and others who are in Albany today risking arrest to show our electeds that we need to #PassNyHealth]
By LORI DEBROWNER
Until last summer, I didn’t worry about health care. My husband Keith was a New York City public school teacher and we had excellent health insurance for ourselves and our kids through his good union job. But after dealing with heart problems since his early 30s, Keith was facing a number of health issues last August. On Aug. 22, he went into the hospital. Our family was devastated when he passed away unexpectedly just two days later.
Two weeks after that I called his union, the United Federation of Teachers, and found out that Keith’s health insurance plan, which also covered me and our 23-year-old daughter, cut us off the day he died.
It was a shocking wake-up call. But my story is familiar to many New Yorkers facing similar struggles, especially after 15 months of a pandemic that has brought illness, death, job losses and huge medical bills to millions of families. When I talk to my family members, friends and neighbors, so many of them are facing their own health-care worries these days.
That is why I’m one of the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers calling on our state senators and assemblymembers to pass the New York Health Act before the legislative session ends on June 10. This bill, if made law, promises to deliver quality, affordable, free-at-point-of-access health care to everyone who lives and works in the state. It would get rid of for-profit health insurance corporations and the billions of dollars these companies suck out of our system for inefficient administration and their own profits.
Union members like my late husband know what a difference quality affordable health care makes. Keith loved his job as a special ed teacher, but he also chose his career path more than 40 years ago because of the good benefits that came with it. The problem is that even when you have good health insurance, there’s no guarantee it will last for as long as you need it.
Instead, we are at the mercy of an overpriced for-profit health care system that is confusing and complicated.
Last summer, as I was grieving the loss of my partner of more than 40 years in the midst of a global pandemic, I had to find new health insurance. I looked on the Affordable Care Act marketplace for a new plan but it was overwhelming trying to figure out if my doctors would be in networks and calculating the differences between premiums, deductibles and copays. I was terrified of not having high-quality insurance because both my daughter and I have chronic conditions that we control with medication.
I decided to enroll in COBRA to maintain the insurance coverage we have had for decades. But now I can barely afford it.
Keith paid about $260 a month for our family health insurance plan when he was alive. Those same benefits under COBRA now cost me almost 10 times as much-— $2,563 a month. I retired at age 62 and COBRA costs more than my monthly Social Security check. It’s only because of my widow’s benefit in Keith’s pension plan that I can cover my monthly mortgage, utility and grocery bills.
There is a better way. The New York Health Act would create a single-payer health-care system that provides the care everyone needs at a lower cost. Every New Yorker would pay an annual amount based on their income — eliminating worries about premiums going up faster than your pay. There’d be no surprise bills. And no loss of insurance if you lost your job.
The legislation would eliminate in-network and out-of-network doctors, deductibles and copays. A family could choose the providers they want and know that all their care would be free at point of access.
It sounds too good to be true but in fact, New York would be joining every other rich nation in the world, all of which already provide guaranteed health care regardless of employment status and whose systems protect public health, not insurance company profits.
There’s no reason we shouldn’t pass this bill now and send it to Gov. Cuomo. The New York Health Act already has majority support in both chambers of the Legislature.
As the legislative session in Albany comes to a close, I’m urging our State Senators and Assembly members to think about their constituents like me who are struggling to recover from the pandemic and keep their families healthy now and for years to come.