RALLYING FOR CARE

Groups concerned about possible health insurance subsidy cuts

Sara Carpenter says her husband, Bob, who is battling leukemia, wouldn’t be alive without the new drug, Imbruvica, which he began taking in 2014.

His battle also might have been lost long ago without insurance because the pharmaceutical product costs more than $11,000 per month.

Carpenter is concerned about the fate of critically ill patients who can’t afford health care if the U.S. Senate adopts a bill similar to one approved earlier in the House, which calls for major cuts.

“People without insurance wouldn’t be able to get treatment,” she said. “They would die.”

She and leaders of two nonprofit groups rallied outside Glens Falls Hospital on Thursday, to protest a possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare.

“Congress has failed to renew funding for critical healthcare programs, which jeopardizes access to care for low- and middle-income residents and threatens hospitals across the state,” said Greenfield resident Ron Deutsch, Fiscal Policy Institute executive director.

The Children’s Health Insurance Program provides coverage for 350,000 children in New York state, he said.

Disproportionate Share Hospital Medicaid payments help hospitals cover the cost of treating uninsured and under-insured patients.

Both programs are at risk, and Glens Falls Hospital could lose up to $3.7 million over several years, Deutsch said.

Saratoga Hospital currently gets $3.1 million of this type of funding.

Ballston Spa resident Joe Seeman, of the Citizen Action Council of New York, said one-fourth of the residents in U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik’s 21st Congressional District are on Medicaid.

“She’s supporting legislation that is going to have a damaging impact on a lot of her constituents,” Seeman said.

Stefanik is a strong critic of Obamacare. This summer, she voted for a Republican bill in the House, which sought to repeal it.

A similar measure is still under debate in the Senate.

Stefanik says Obamacare limits people’s health care choices.

“One third of the counties in this country only have one insurer on the Obamacare exchange,” she said recently. “That’s not sustainable.”

PAUL POST — PPOST@DIGITALFIRSTMEDIA.COM Fiscal Policy Institute Executive Director Ron Deutsch, center, discusses threats to healthcare because of proposed federal budget cuts. He and others rallied outside Glens Falls Hospital on Thursday. Many upstate hospitals would lose funding, they say.

PAUL POST — PPOST@DIGITALFIRSTMEDIA.COM Sara Carpenter, left, joined by her daughter, Anna, is concerned about the fate of critically-ill patients if the Affordable Care Act is repealed.