Healthcare

Healthcare & New York

The NY Health Act is NYPAN’s #1 legislative priority this year. Again.

The legislation is a single-payer healthcare bill that would provide truly comprehensive healthcare – medical, dental, optical, hearing, mental health and prescription drugs and even long term care – to every resident of the state, regardless of their immigration status, pre-existing conditions, sexual orientation, age, employment status or anything else. Services would be financed using a progressive contribution, and everyone would pay according to their ability to pay.

Currently, many people don’t get regular care, and then high costs for emergency care and Medicaid fall to cash-strapped local governments. Also, currently, everyone pays more than necessary in order to cover huge profits for insurance companies and exorbitant salaries for their executives. A “Medicare for All” system would save New York billions of dollars per year - in part from reduced local property taxes (which currently fund Medicaid), and it would also allow residents to change jobs or start their own businesses more easily because insurance would not be tied to employment.

Here’s a recap of what the Single Payer Committee got done:

• We hosted monthly meetings to share information about the NY Health Act and to coordinate strategy and tactics across the state, with guest speakers including state legislators, healthcare policy experts, union leaders and grassroots organizations

• We spearheaded and/or participated in statewide NYHA organizing efforts including lobby visits, canvassing, phone banks, rallies and rolling out the Candidate Pledge

• And we helped shape and coordinate the statewide Campaign for NY Health strategy as a member of the newly formed Steering Committee 

Our five working groups performed most of this work. They are:

People2People Working Group (Erl Kimmich):

• Participated or led at least one canvass per week and usually two from April through December with some slacking in the summer months. We helped in the collection of about 1000 postcards and had hundreds of face to face conversations by the end of Dec.

• During the campaign week of action we hosted canvasses daily and organized a Rally at the State office building and one at Cousin's office

• Nov. 20th we led a rally at 125th and Lenox which had decent turn out and great speakers

• Members participated in campaign sponsored social media events

• We hosted Art Builds to print T-shirts and posters and create artwork in support of our action like the giant check by Caroline Cutlip that we tried to present to Cousins at her office, but were denied access to her staff even.

• Our leader and chair Naomi Zwede honored invitations to speak at many events

• We hosted an almost 2 hour educational virtual town hall and discussion of the Health Act with assembly and senate members and medical professionals on the panel

• Through our contacts we were able to connect NYPAN's labor committee with United Electric Workers who since have endorsed the health Act.

• Participated in the Campaign's big April "die in" in Albany

• Created strategy of massive outreach - ACT - share and sign up here!

Labor Working Group (Jeff Mikkelson):

• Workshopped and produced a new NYHA union outreach flyer

• Formed an alliance with the Cross Retirees Organizing Committee and mutually supported their fight against the privatization of health benefits for municipal retirees

• Successfully lobbied the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America to become the most recent union to endorse NYHA

Medical Professionals Working Group (Donald Gardner): 

• Worked to build support among medical professionals, such as nurses, therapists (physical, occupational, mental health), and hospital/clinic/nursing home employees, pharmacists and home health aides physicians, non-physicians, nurses, PAs, etc., as well as office/business/practice managers in all medical and clinical environments

• Engaged with upstate and Finger Lakes region physicians, hospitals and educators and local officials to help spread the word

• Produced a ‘volunteer-to-provider’ letter for NYPAN representatives to deliver to their providers during their own encounters, and a ‘provider-to-provider’ letter for the doctors to forward to their colleagues and engage more healthcare NYHA supporters

• These letters were shared with key representatives of Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) to extend the distribution of letters

• Through our outreach to these providers, and their outreach to their colleagues, we seek to share the information about the NYHA and/or correct any mis-information

Research Working Group (Javier Anderson and Steven Cecchini):

Researchers are the unsung heroes of the Committee, finding relevant, useful, actionable information about any aspect of our work at any time! One of their long-term projects this year was development of our new Health Act Calculator (and an accompanying phone version) to let people see exactly what they would save under the Health Act.

Electoral Working Group (Ting Barrow):

• Helped petition to get all of NYPAN’s 30+ endorsed candidates on the ballot for the June or August primaries.

• Worked to get electeds to sign the Candidate Pledge to support the Health Act

While our efforts were not sufficient to bring the Health Act to a vote in 2022, we have not stopped, nor will we stop in developing strategies to build our base of engaged activists and spread the word about the Health Act to the millions of New Yorkers who have not heard of it.

Our team continues to grow and we are looking for volunteers. Let's go! This bill is ours to win.

On our side, NYPAN vigorously reconstituted our Single Payer Committee, which has been hard at work producing new flyers - one general purpose one, available in multiple languages, and one for labor - distributing them, and taking part in phone and textbanks. We also have been collecting a ton of the postcards, which will be presented to the legislative leadership during Lobby Day, just after the budget is completed.

2022 is the year we’ll have our best shot in the last 30 years. Let’s not squander it!