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HEALTH CARE FOR AMERICA NOW Press Statement by Mark Hannay December 18, 2009 We stand here today midst the holiday season when people of various faith traditions the world over pause to celebrate a season of light and hope. And we gather here today on the shores of the Hudson River looking out onto the Statue of Liberty, a beacon of hope to generations of new-arrivals to our shores for over a century. For many, the Statue of Liberty is not only a symbol of hope, but also a symbol of freedom. Nearly 69 years ago, an American president who wanted to provide health care for all in America, spoke of the essential Four Freedoms in an historic address to a joint session of Congress. President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke of freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. For millions of Americans, access to health care for all is about freedom from want and freedom from fear. President Obama and our Congressional leaders have a unique opportunity during this season of hope to move toward universal health care here in the United States, to finally deliver on the freedoms from want and fear. But to do so, they must stand up to the vested special interests that have a stranglehold on our political process and are threatening the entire health care reform process going on in the Senate at this very moment. Our nation’s leaders face a choice: stand up for freedom, or succumb to politics-as-usual and the forces of the status quo. Right now, the Senate is engaged in a mighty battle between the forces of change and hope, and the forces of the status quo that currently leaves over 46 million in America without health care, millions more under-insured, and the rest of us at the mercy of those who profit at the misfortune of the sick and the injured. The outcome of this fight is not yet known, but it will likely conclude within the next week. We want to acknowledge and thank our Senators for leading the fight for reform: Senators Lautenberg and Menendez from New Jersey, and Senators Gillibrand and Schumer from New York. We urge them to keep on fighting for hope and health care justice. We also want to acknowledge the historic vote taken by the House of Representatives last month: the first time ever that a house of Congress had passed a major national health care bill. We want to thank the members of the New Jersey and New York delegations who voted for it. They set a standard that we call on the Senate will follow, for in many ways, the House bill is much superior to that now being debated in the Senate. We here today call on Senators Gillibrand, Lautenberg, Menendez, and Schumer, and all members of the New Jersey and New York Congressional delegations to deliver on REAL health care reform in this season of hope. REAL health care reform means:
It is a tradition during this season of hope for the exchange of gifts. For millions across America, especially during this time of severe economic crisis, the only gift they truly want is the gift of health and well-being, health security for themselves and their families, and freedom from want and fear. President Obama and Congress stand on the brink of giving that hope and freedom. But like the shepherds out in the field and the magi crossing the deserts, as conveyed in the biblical Christmas stories, they must “fear not.” People all across America, and we here in New Jersey and New York, stand with you, Mr. President, Mr. Majority Leader, and Madame Speaker, and all our Senators and Representatives as this year you give the gift of hope to millions across America currently facing hopelessness and despair. We call on you to respond to the spirit and blessings of the season, and thank you for your leadership ************************************************************************************************************************************** HEALTH CARE FOR AMERICA NOW FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Statement by Mark Hannay We who are gathered here today are partners in the New York City Organizing Committee for Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a broad coalition of over 1,000 national, state, and local organizations fighting for REAL health care reform. In addition to my own coalition, lead organizations in our local committee include: ACORN, AFSCME NYS, Children’s Defense Fund of NY, Citizen Action of NYC, Committee of Interns and Residents, Communication Workers of America, Community Service Society, Make the Road NY, MoveOn, National Physicians Alliance, NY Immigration Coalition, NYC for Change, NYS AFL-CIO, Raising Women’s Voices, SEIU Local 32 BJ, 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, and Young Invincibles. Less than a week ago, thousands of New Yorkers gathered at these steps here at City Hall to celebrate one of our city’s home teams, the Yankees, in their victory in the 2009 World Series. We who are here today come to celebrate another home team: our city’s Congressional delegation in their victory for health care for all New Yorkers in passing the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Our “Most Valuable Players” are (in alphabetical order): Rep. Gary Ackerman, Rep. Yvette Clarke, Rep. Joseph Crowley, Rep. Eliot Engel, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Rep. Gregory Meeks, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Rep. Charles Rangel, Rep. Jose Serrano, Rep. Edolphus Towns, Rep. Nydia Velazquez, and Rep. Anthony Weiner. We invited all the Congressmembers to attend today, and are delighted that Rep. Engel is here with us, and he will be speaking shortly. Unfortunately, we’re very disappointed that one of the New York team struck out: Rep. Michael McMahon who represents the 13th Congressional District that includes Staten Island and the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights. We’ll be encouraging him to hit the ball during his next at-bat, once the Senate debate and vote is done, and a final conference committee bill comes up for a floor vote in the House next month. Unlike the Yankees victory of last week, our state and nation’s health care crisis is no mere game for millions of New Yorkers and Americans. While the Yankees won their baseball victory in six games over 8 days, our health care victory extends back a century to when another New Yorker, President Teddy Roosevelt, first proposed a national health program. The legislation the House passed the past weekend is truly historic – it is the first time ever that a house of Congress has passed comprehensive national health reform legislation. The significance of this vote cannot be understated. It is on par with the enactment of Social Security in 1935, Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, and the State Child Health Insurance Program in 1996. We also want to note with deep dismay the inclusion of strong anti-choice provisions in the House bill which will severely limit coverage for comprehensive reproductive health care for women. These measures are known as the "Stupak-Pitt amendment." To their credit, all members of our city's delegation, including Rep. McMahon, voted against it, so we owe all of them thanks for their courageous stand on this matter too. We’ll be working with Senators Schumer and Gillibrand to keep similar harmful measures out of the Senate bill. Passage of H.R. 3962 was a momentous event where a majority of members of the House of Representatives, including 12 from New York City, finally stood up against the vested special interests and the defenders of a clearly-dysfunctional status quo who time and time again have defeated efforts at health care reform over the past century. This time, health care justice triumphed, and our city’s 12 members provided the margin of victory. They truly are “most valuable players” for health care for all in America, and we salute them for their political courage and fortitude, and thank them for their leadership. Millions of New Yorkers will benefit, and we are all very grateful. Let’s hear it for the home team! ************************************************************************************************************************************** HEALTH CARE FOR AMERICA NOW FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Statement by Mark Hannay, Director We who are gathered here today are partners in the New York City Organizing Committee for Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a broad coalition of over 1,000 national, state, and local organizations fighting for REAL health care reform. In addition to my own coalition, lead organizations in our local committee include: ACORN, AFSCME NYS, Children’s Defense Fund of NY, Citizen Action of NYC, Committee of Interns and Residents, Communication Workers of America, Community Service Society, Make the Road NY, MoveOn, National Physicians Alliance, NY Immigration Coalition, NYC for Change, NYS AFL-CIO, Raising Women’s Voices, SEIU Local 32 BJ, 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, and Young Invincibles. Health Care for America Now and our allies here in New York are gathered here this evening to welcome President Obama to New York, to thank him for his leadership on health care reform, and to say that we stand with him in the fight for REAL reform because he’s standing with us. We stand with him for aspects of reform that matter to New Yorkers. The details of health care reform DO matter. Chief among these is the choice of a new public health insurance option linked to Medicare. A strong public option is indeed the real “game changer” that makes health care reform possible and makes health care reform work, and that reorients our health care system to assure access to comprehensive, quality, affordable health care for all in America. Our nation cannot succeed at this goal, one we’ve been striving for since the time of Teddy Roosevelt, without a strong public option. It is the necessary component, and it must be linked to Medicare in order to provide relief to the millions of uninsured and underinsured in American that need help now. On numerous occasions, President Obama has called for a new public health insurance option as a part of health care reform. We stand here this evening to echo his commitment. We state emphatically, “We stand with you, Mr. President for a strong public option: doctors and nurses, working men and women, your former campaign volunteers, small business owners, young adults and senior citizens, women’s and children’s rights advocates, immigrant rights advocates, people of faith, and grassroots activists of many stripes. All of us stand with you in the fight for a public option because YOU, Mr. President, are standing with US in support of the freedom to choose a public health insurance option. The American people – by wide margins in many polls – strongly support a new public option. In short, Mr. President, we New Yorkers and we Americans have got your back! Defeating the public option is the #1 goal of the private insurance industry, the very folks who’ve created our health insurance crisis in this country in the first place. Just recently, the insurance industry began coming out with phony, biased studies to scare-monger Americans about health care reform, just as they have done time and time again over the last 100 years. But the American people are not buying their lies this time around. We know that the vested special interests such as the insurance industry are the true enemies of health care reform and health care justice in America. We’ve had enough of their abuse that has brought about needless illness, suffering, and the premature death of Americans – 45 thousand every year – just so they can make profits for Wall St. investors. The jig is up! In addition to the imperative for a public option, other aspects of reform are important to New Yorkers. These concerns include making sure that premiums and out-of-pocket costs are affordable if people and businesses are going to be required to carry coverage, making sure legal immigrants can benefit from reform just like all other tax-paying Americans, and funding reform through progressive taxation instead of taxing workers’ health benefits or comprehensive health plans required by people with serious illnesses. Several of our speakers today will be addressing these topics in more depth. ************************************************************************************************************************************** HEALTH CARE FOR AMERICA NOW FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Statement at “BIG Insurance: Sick of It!” Good afternoon. My name is Mark Hannay, and I am Director of the Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign, a citywide coalition of community groups and labor unions that have been fighting for universal health care since 1993. We are also a member of the Steering Committee of our statewide coalition, Health Care for All New York, and we help lead Health Care for America Now’s New York City Organizing Committee and serve on its New York State Steering Committee. Thank you for being here today. I bring you greetings from Health Care for America Now, a national coalition of over 1,000 national, state, and local organizations and trade unions who have joined together to fight for REAL health care reform in 2009, and for a strong public health insurance option to be included in health care reform legislation. It’s long past time for our nation to join every other industrialized democracy in the world to guarantee comprehensive, quality, affordable health care to all, and we’re going to make it happen THIS YEAR. We’re here today to join with thousands of Americans to say “BIG Insurance – We’re Sick of It!” Our protest here today against United Healthcare is one of 5 demonstrations happening outside insurance company offices across New York in Buffalo, Binghamton, Albany, and on Long Island. And we are one of scores of protests happening all across America today against BIG Insurance. We are here today to call on our lawmakers to stop listening to BIG Insurance. We call on them to listen instead to the vast majority of New Yorkers and Americans who want REAL health care reform. We want it done this year, and we demand a strong public health insurance option in any health care reform bill coming out of Congress. We’ve had enough of BIG Insurance, we don’t want it anymore, and we want the choice of a way out, a public option. We’re here to proclaim, “Hasta la vista, baby!” to United Healthcare and BIG Insurance. Have you had enough of BIG Insurance? So have I. Today we’re standing outside United Healthcare’s NYC offices, located across the street at One Penn Plaza, directly above Penn Station and adjacent to Madison Square Garden. Let me tell you a little bit about United Healthcare’s record here in New York, based on a report released today by the Public Policy and Education Fund of New York: According to their analysis based on data from the New York State Department of Health and the New York State Insurance Department, United Healthcare has one of the worst consumer service records of any health insurer in the state.
I also want to tell you a bit about how United Healthcare is working to stop REAL health care reform legislation in Congress:
In closing, let me invite all of you to join with all of us in Health Care for America Now, MoveOn, and our allies here today to blunt the inordinate influence of BIG Insurance on Congress. Otherwise, we'll get health care reform BIG Insurance-style. That would be a true nightmare and something NONE of us wants. Together, we can make history. We CAN win REAL health care reform, including a strong public option, this year, but ONLY if each one of us takes action. We urge everyone to call Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand and your own member of Congress every week from now until a final bill passes. Tell them to “stop listening to BIG Insurance, and give us the choice of a strong public health insurance option.” Thank you for being here. Now, let’s get to it! **************************************************************************************************************************************
Statement by Mark Hannay, Director August 29, 2009 Welcome to “The Dream Lives On: United We Stand for Health Care for All”, a gathering for New Yorkers from all across our region to converge in unity for health care for all in America. We are also coming together today to remember the life of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and for all of us to rededicate ourselves to the cause of his life: universal health care. My name is Mark Hannay. I wear several professional hats these days: I’m Director of the Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign. I co-lead Health Care for America Now’s New York City Organizing Committee. I help lead our statewide coalition Health Care for All New York. And I co-chair the national Universal Health Care Action Network. But I’m taking off all my hats now, and want to talk to you as one New Yorker to another, and briefly tell you my story, just as you’ll hear the stories of other New Yorkers today. Senator Ted Kennedy introduced his first universal health care bill in Congress in 1970. I was 15 years old, living upstate in a suburb of Rochester. I didn’t have any awareness then about health care politics and policy. But my mother was a juvenile diabetic, who usually had to be hospitalized two or three times a year for some medical crisis or another. She had to inject herself with insulin twice a day, sometimes with my help when she couldn’t find a patch of skin that wasn’t hardened from numerous shots. There wasn’t a week that went by in her life when she didn’t experience hypoglycemia at least once, and she always carried an orange in her pocketbook. I remember the first time my father told me he felt lucky to have good family coverage through his job, so that Mom could get the health care she needed. I remember when he told me that she wouldn’t be able to get insurance on her own, simply because she was a diabetic. When I asked him why, he simply said, “because that’s the way it is..” His answered seemed unfair, and just not right to me then. Flash forward 23 years. It’s 1993, I’m 38, and I’m now living and working in New York City. I’m a member of ACT UP/New York and working at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, trying to do everything we can to make sure people living with HIV and AIDS at that time could get and keep good insurance coverage here in New York. President Clinton had just been elected, we had hope, and Teddy Kennedy was at is side, still leading the fight in the U.S. Senate for health care for all. Unfortunately, that effort didn’t succeed, but 3 years later, Senator Kennedy led the successful fight to establish the State Child Health Insurance Program, and now millions of formerly uninsured children can see a doctor and get their vaccinations for school. Now, it’s 2009, and I guess you at the age of 54 you could call me a health care veteran. But the good news is that things are far different now than back when I was 15 in 1970. We are closer now than we have ever been before to guaranteeing comprehensive, quality, affordable health care for all in America. We have a bigger movement for health care reform than we have ever had before, including many 15-year olds in upstate New York and all across our nation. We stand here today in Times Square –hundreds if not thousands of New Yorkers-- and millions of Americans join with us in spirit and solidarity to say “NOW is the time for health care for all. Finally,… NOW is the time!” We are able to do this because we are all standing on the shoulders of giants like Senator Edward Kennedy, and many, many hundreds of other lesser known Americans who have worked tirelessly for almost a century now in the struggle for health care justice in America. Who are we all now? We are 450,000 doctors, we are hundreds of religious congregations, we are millions of trade unionists, we are a new generation of young Americans, we are a generation of wise elders, we are men and women of every station, we are small business owners struggling to make a living and cover our employees, we are newcomers striving for the American dream of opportunity, equality, and justice. In sum, we are New York, and we are America, and we are all standing up together for health care for all. We’ve come too far to turn back now. Our movement for health care justice is now too big and too strong, and “yes we can” make change a reality. When Congress reconvenes down in Washington, DC in two weeks, on the first day back, everyone one will offer tributes to Senator Kennedy’s fight for health care justice. All of these tributes will be well-deserved. We mourn that he could not be with us to finish the job. But rest assured and in peace, Senator Kennedy …we will get it done! The next day we’ve all got to start asking our Senators and Representatives, “Where’s Senator Kennedy’s universal health care bill? Where is the Kennedy Health Care bill? Our job now is to pick up the torch. Our job now is to push onward to make Senator Kennedy’s health care bill the law of the land. Finally,… health care for all in America. Senator Kennedy himself spoke these words just down the street from here on August 12, 1980, some 29 years ago. They are his legacy to us. “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.” We’re going to make that dream happen in 2009. ************************************************************************************************************************************** HEALTH CARE FOR AMERICA NOW Closing Statement by Mark Hannay Thank you all for joining us here today. And we want to thank Rep. Nadler for being with us today -- he is a true champion for health care justice in Congress. ************************************************************************************************************************************** Health Care for America Now For Immediate Release PROGRESSIVE TAX PLAN KEY TO HEALTH REFORM New Twin Studies Show that Tax Increase on Highest-Income Earners Advocates Call on NYC House Delegation to Vote Yes on H.R. 3200 New York, NY – As the House of Representatives continues to negotiate their health care reform bill, Health Care for America Now’s New YorkState (HCANNY) coalition today urged strong support from the New York City delegation for the House bill’s proposed income tax “surcharge” on the wealthy and for keeping strong affordability measures intact in the legislation. The group said that a fair tax plan is the only reasonable means to achieve health care for all, because it would make reform more affordable for struggling New Yorkers. In a noon event at City Hall, HCAN NY released two studies that, taken together, show that health insurance is becoming increasingly unaffordable in New York, but that the surcharge, as originally proposed to apply to families making over $350,000 a year, would address the issue of affordability without raising taxes on middle income New Yorkers or tax their health care benefits. “It’s critical that our New York City Congressional delegation stays diligent in the fight to keep the House bill strong. We need a strong public option, affordability measures that protect middle-income New Yorkers, and a tax surcharge on the wealthiest Americans to pay for this plan. We thank our congressional leaders and expect every member of the New York City delegation to vote yes on the House bill before they return for August recess.” Said Pete Sikora, Director of Special Projects, CWA District 1. “We need to lower health care costs and improve coverage for the majority of Americans who have health insurance, while expanding coverage to the tens of millions of Americans that are uninsured or underinsured,” said Lillian Roberts, Executive Director, DC 37, AFSCME. “There’s no two ways about it: providing the necessary subsidies for low- and middle-income people to obtain affordable health insurance is going to require large expenditures by the federal government. In order to make reform sustainable in the long-term, we’ve got to ask the wealthiest Americans -- those who benefitted from the Bush tax cuts -- to pay their fair share.” “New York had an 8.7 percent unemployment rate as of June, and New York had over 45,000 non-business bankruptcies in 2008, most directly related to medical bills,” said Mark Hannay, Director of Metro New York Health Care for All, who moderated the event. “Given the weak New YorkState economy, it would be totally unacceptable to increase out-of-pocket costs for low and moderate income people or tax their health care benefits. We must fund health care reform by asking the wealthy to contribute a bit more to provide economic and health security for all New Yorkers.” The affordability study, prepared by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), finds that health insurance premiums for New York working families have gone up 97% between 2000 and 2007, a period in which New Yorkers’ median earnings went up only 11%. The HCAN report finds that health care will become increasingly unaffordable without reform: while the full cost of employer-sponsored insurance now equals 25 percent of median family income in New York that number will grow to 47 percent by 2016 if meaningful health reform doesn’t pass, pricing more and more New Yorkers out of the health insurance market. (The full report, called “Health Insurance Coverage in New York Keeps Shrinking as Premiums, Family Costs Continue Climbing” is available at: www.hcanny.org.) “Affordability is the whole point of health care reform,” said Dr. Greg Dodell, a resident physician in Internal Medicine and member of the Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU Healthcare. “Reform would be meaningless if my patients can’t afford to purchase coverage or can’t afford to get the care they need once they are covered. Its like the old adage – an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We can spend the money to get health care right today, or we can continue spending more on costs year after year after year.” HCAN NY also released a second report today by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) finding that a proposal in House health care reform legislation (H.R. 3200) to impose an income tax surcharge on married couples with an adjusted gross income of $350,000 ($280,000 for single taxpayers) would affect only 1.8% of New York taxpayers. Nationally, the surcharge would raise $543 billion to fund health care for all with a high-quality public health insurance option. (Copies of all 50 state reports, including the New York report, are available at: http://www.ctj.org/payingforhealthcare.htm.) “The House income tax surcharge proposal asks the richest one percent of Americans to give back some of the tax cuts they received in the Bush years to help fund our most critical domestic priority in a generation: providing all Americans with quality health care,” said Hannay. “The richest one percent of Americans will have received $700 billion from the Bush tax cuts by the end of 2010. These wealthy Americans can obviously afford to contribute a little bit more to ensure that all Americans have access to quality health care coverage." Health Care for American Now is the nation’s largest health care reform campaign with over 1,000 member organizations nationwide. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Opening Statement Those of us gathered today are all members of Health Care for America Now, a national coalition of over 1,000 national, state, and local community groups and trade unions fighting for quality, affordable health care for everyone in America. Today’s event is one of hundreds happening across our country as a part of a National Day of Action on health care reform sponsored by the AFL-CIO and Health Care for America Now. We are here today to demonstrate everyday New Yorkers’ support for politically-progressive health care reform legislation now being put forward in House of Representatives. Together we call on EVERY MEMBER of the New York City Congressional delegation to SUPPORT H.R. 3200, the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, now being negotiated in committee. We want to thank our New York City members of Congress for their important leadership and hard work on this legislation. Today, we now send a clear message to them that we need every member of congress to stay in Washington, to not give in on weakening the legislation, and to pass the bill through the House BEFORE returning home for their August recess. We also say to Senator Schumer, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee where reform legislation is stalled, and to Senator Gillibrand that proposals now in development in the Senate to gut true health care reform by not offering Ameriancs the choice of a public health insurance option, and by not requiring employers to “pay their fair share” for health care is unacceptable. Senators Schumer and Gillibrand must indicate in the strongest of terms to Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus that New Yorkers demand the right to choose of a public health insurance plan, and demand that employers be required to offer health benefits to employees. These two reforms must be included in any final reform bill. We are also here today to share highlights with you of two new reports that outline exactly why we need Congress to stand strong on two key measures in the House health reform bill:
The first report, titled “Health Insurance Coverage Keeps Shrinking as Premiums and Family Costs Continue Climbing”, is from our national coalition, Health Care for America Now. It describes what has been happening here in New York and across America to working families’ ability to afford to obtain and use health insurance during the past decade. In short, health coverage is rapidly becoming unaffordable to buy and use. This is a crisis Congress must adequately address as it crafts national health care reform legislation. Skimping on adequate affordability protections for low and moderate-income families in a reform bill just to meet an arbitrary budget target will not so and is not acceptable. In a few moments Elisabeth Benjamin from Community Service Society will speak further about what “affordable health care” means for New Yorkers. The second report, titled “Three Proposals to Pay for Health Care Reform Without Hurting Struggling Families”, is from Citizens for Tax Justice, a national public interest research and advocacy organization that focuses on federal, state, and local tax policies as they affect working families. This report discusses three specific options for how we as a nation can afford to pay for REAL health care reform, and provide good and real health insurance coverage to all, without causing any additional and undue financial burdens on working and middle-class New Yorkers. Some of these ideas mirror those proposed by President Obama and Congressional leaders. We think they are good ideas, and call on Congress to enact them as part of health care reform. The most important suggestion in this second report is currently included in the House reform bill. It must stay in as it was originally proposed and not be weakened. The report found that this idea to impose an income tax surcharge on married couples with an adjusted gross income of $350,000 ($280,000 for single taxpayers) would affect only 1.8% of all New York taxpayers. Nationally, the surcharge would raise $543 billion to fund health care for all, including a new public health insurance option. Our members of Congress CANNOT agree to give up on this proposal or water it down because they would then be forced to either a) make health coverage unaffordable to middle-class New Yorkers or b) ask middle income American’s to pay more, through a tax on their health care benefits, as is being talked about is some quraters. Neither of those options are acceptable. We expect our city’s congressional delegation to stand strong and keep the surcharge right where it started. Finally, we are here today to thank our city’s Congressional delegation for the crucial leadership they are providing to move health care reform legislation forward in Congress. Despite the ups and downs of the process in down in Washington, DC over the last week or so, we who are gathered here today remain hopeful and vigilant in the fight for health care justice in America. Few things are more important to everyday New Yorkers than the peace of mind and financial security that good health care coverage brings – THAT is the change that New Yorkers voted for last fall. The opponents of reform –the vested special interests and political partisans– are currently engaged in a war against health care reform. They are throwing their massive resources at Congress to try to stop progressive reform legislation from moving forward. We urge New York’s Senators and Representatives to stand fast against this onslaught, to continue to fight for comprehensive, quality, affordable health care for all New Yorkers and all in America, and to get health care reform done this year. Before we get our speakers who will describe in more detail the affordability needs of New York, and who will further discuss our political concerns for our members of Congress, we want to turn first to three everyday New Yorkers who will briefly tell us their own personal stories of why affordable health insurance is important: a patient, a small business owner, and a doctor. Their stories remind us of what health care reform is really all about for all of us, that true health reform is not primarily about numbers on the government’s budget ledger, but rather about the real people’s everyday lives, and the health and well-being of working New York families. ******************************************************************************************************* Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRESS STATEMENT OUTSIDE THE OFFICE OF SENATOR PEDRO ESPADA DURING A PROTEST Yesterday, we witnessed a “billionaire coup d’etat” here in Albany because a very rich man did not want to pay higher taxes needed to pay for, among other things, Medicaid and other public health insurance programs for uninsured New Yorkers, a number that is growing daily during a serious economic recession when thousands of New Yorkers are losing their jobs and their employer-based health coverage. This coup, if successful, will stop a whole variety of vital bills that are coming to the fore in the closing days of this year’s legislative session from moving forward, including important reforms to make comprehensive health insurance more affordable, especially important during a recession when more and more people are losing employer-based coverage and must purchase it on the open market. Among these reforms is a bill proposed by Governor Paterson and Insurance Superintendent Dinallo to have the New York State Insurance Department approve all health insurance premium increases before they go into effect. The insurance industry is fighting this very modest step tooth-and-nail. Yet to everyday New Yorkers, this reform is a no-brainer. Last November, New Yorkers voted for bills like this when we voted for change. Yesterday’s attempted billionaire coup d’etat has stopped the change New Yorkers desperately want and need.
*************************************************************************************************************************************** Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA STATEMENT CONCERNING (New York) – The “New Yorkers Pay When Big Money Plays” report released today by Citizen Action of New York documents, among other findings, how New Yorkers are unnecessarily paying more for health insurance and for prescription drugs than we have to. We New Yorkers find ourselves in this predicament because of the inordinate influence of the insurance and drug industries on the New York State Legislature. As this report shows, for several years running now, these businesses have stopped two important bills that would lower prices for health insurance policies and prescription drugs for New Yorkers. We are being price-gouged in order to protect these industries’ profiteering, and our health is being held in jeopardy. Lower prices for health coverage and prescription drugs will help the bottom line for millions of New Yorkers at a time of economic crisis for many. Lower prices will also increase access to good health insurance at a time that many are losing their jobs and thereby losing their employer-provided coverage, unless they can afford to elect for very expensive COBRA continuation. Finally, by lowering prices and thereby increasing access to affordable insurance and prescription drugs, these two bills will improve the health and well-being of tens of thousands of individual New Yorkers. They will also enhance the public health of all New Yorkers at the very time when we face threats of new epidemics such at the H1N1 “swine” flu. We everyday New Yorkers are fortunate to have legislative leaders such as Assembly Health Committee chair Richard Gottfried of Manhattan, Senator John Sampson of Brooklyn, and Assemblymember Adam Bradley of White Plains who have continually stepped forward on our behalf to sponsor these bills to protect our health and well-being. Unfortunately, the insurance and drug industries have blunted these legislators’ leadership by aggressive lobbying that distorts characterizations of these bills. They have also protected their profits by sprinkling campaign contributions across the members of our State Legislature and making donations to the campaign committees of the majorities and minorities in each chamber. This corruption of our state government would end with adoption of public financing of election campaigns here in New York. As we say in the health care movement, campaign finance reform IS health care reform. Many of us advocates believe that comprehensive health care reform may only be achievable once big special interest money is removed from our political system. We therefore call on our Legislature to support renewed efforts by Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith and Speaker Sheldon Silver to reform our state’s system of election campaign funding this year. We whole-heartedly support their efforts to replace private interest with public interest by enacting comprehensive campaign finance reform to set up a system of public financing. |
