NYC plans health care for every resident
Comprehensive system would insure 600,000 people who lack coverage
ALBANY, N.Y. – New York City plans to install the first comprehensive health care system in the nation, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday.
De Blasio said the program NYC Care will pay the insurance costs for 600,000 residents who do not have coverage, making it the largest city in the nation to guarantee coverage for patients.
“We recognized that health care is not just in theory a right. It’s in practice a right,” the Democrat said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
The plan would cost about $100 million a year and expand on the city’s public option plan as well as the state’s health care exchange that enrolls about 4.6 million New Yorkers through the Affordable Care Act, he said.
Some lawmakers are pushing the entire state to adopt comprehensive health care, saying that although it would cost the state billions, it would be the most cost-effective way to ensure health coverage for residents.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and some Democrats in the majority have been skeptical of the plan, saying the cost could double the roughly $170 billion budget and require new taxes.
De Blasio said the city doesn’t plan to raise taxes on residents because the cost and the program itself would be phased in over several years.
He said the city’s uninsured are mainly young people who don’t think they need insurance, those who can’t afford it or undocumented immigrants who cannot access health insurance. The program will launch this summer in the Bronx and be fully implemented over two years across the city, he said.
Spector is Gannett’s Albany Bureau chief