Gottfried sees hope for single-payer care
BY GABE HERMAN
Assemblymember Richard Gottfried presented
details of his single-payer healthcare bill to the
Community Board 6 Health and Education
Committee in late April.
Gottfried — who chairs the Assembly’s Committee
on Health — has sponsored the New York Health Act
in the state Assembly since 1992. There now seems to
be growing momentum among Democrats, including
on the national level, for a single-payer system, which
has been endorsed by many of the Democratic presidential
nominees.
The bill would give universal health coverage to all
New Yorkers. It would eliminate premiums, deductibles,
out-of-pocket costs, co-pays, co-insurance and
out-of-network charges. Progressive taxes, including
payroll and non-payroll, would help pay for the new
health system.
Gottfried said at the meeting that, over all, $11 billion
would be saved under the new healthcare system.
While $44 billion more would be spent to provide
coverage to everyone, there would be $55 billion in
savings, including $20 billion from administrative
costs and savings from lower drug prices and reimbursements
to providers, according to the plan.
Gottfried stressed the urgent need for reforms in
the healthcare system. He said that medical costs
are the top reason for personal bankruptcies in New
York.
He noted that his own parents had their lifetime
savings wiped out from medical costs from needed
home care. In the current system, often a family member
has to give up a career to stay home and care for a
sick relative, he said.
Assemblymember Richard Gottfried.
Gottfried also cited a study that found 60 percent
of American households could not afford a sudden expense
of $1,000, and he noted that the average family
deductible for health insurance is $3,200.
“I think this is something that we should all be pretty
angry about,” Gottfried said of the current healthcare
system.
Premiums and deductibles are both rising much
faster than wages, Gottfried said, and employers are
shifting more of the cost of healthcare to their workers
through higher deductibles, which are out-ofpocket
expenses.
Insurance plans have restricted networks and many
insurance companies will unfairly deny coverage for a
service, and assume the customer will get frustrated
and eventually go away, Gottfried said. He added that
insurers benefi t when sick patients go to another company.
“Insurance companies really don’t like having customers
who use healthcare,” he said. “Think about
that the next time you hear that insurance companies
compete. They compete by getting people who need
their coverage walking away and going to the other
company.”
New York expends tens of millions of dollars on
things that don’t make people healthier, Gottfried
said, including bureaucracy, administrative costs, and
not having bargaining clout with drug companies on
prices.
When questions were taken from community board
members and the audience, Gottfried was asked if
people could buy extra insurance on top of the new
plan. Gottfried said that would be allowed if the insurance
found something that his bill doesn’t cover.
Another person asked about preventing people
moving here from other states for the healthcare benefi
ts. Gottfried said New York has expanded its Medicaid
eligibility and other health coverage, but that
people didn’t migrate here for programs like Medicaid
or Child Health Plus, so there was no evidence that
would be such a problem.
Gottfried’s bill has passed the state Assembly the
past four years, but never came to a vote in the Republican
led state Senate. Gottfried told this paper after
the meeting that, now with a new Democratic state
Senate, he is optimistic the measure can be passed.
However, a vote on the bill reportedly won’t come up
in the state Senate before 2020, and the issue continues
to be debated.
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