NY Dems Pass Medical Debt Relief as Progressives Push to Expand Healthcare to Undocumented Residents

where we begin Today's Show here in New York where the Democratic governor Kathy hokel faces pressure to expand Health Care coverage for people regardless of their immigration status Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers of the New York State Legislature and today is the second of a two-day special session where State Assembly members could vote to expand health coverage for thousands of people in a bill called

coverage for all which would use a surplus of federal funds allowing people who are undocumented to enroll in New York's essential plan under the federal Affordable Care Act currently over a quarter million New Yorkers are excluded from Medicaid and the essential plan Health Care coverage due to their immigration status the measure is sponsored by New York assembly member Jessica Gonzalez Rojas who negotiated with the governor

to address cost concerns but this week it was not included in a list of legislation to be considered in this final special session by assembly speaker oral Hasty prompting immigrant Advocates to Rally outside the assembly as lawmakers returned for their session Tuesday this comes as Governor hokel is set to sign a measure that did pass in the assembly Tuesday and is celebrated by Health Care Advocates

because it would bar credit reporting agencies from collecting medical debt or including medical debt in a consumer's credit report a survey by the community service Society of New York found more than 40 percent of New Yorkers have paid a medical bill that may not have owed out of fear of it being sent to collections meanwhile about the same percentage said they'd avoided getting Health Care they

needed because of the cost for more we're joined by two guests in a minute we'll speak with New York State Assembly member Jessica Gonzalez Rojas but first Elizabeth Benjamin vice president of Health initiatives at the community service Society of New York and co-founder of health care for all New York campaign Elizabeth welcome back to democracy now why don't we start off with this medical debt victory

that you've had in both houses of the New York legislature before we move on to the issue of immigrant Health Care talk about the medical debt bill that just passed by the assembly was already passed by the Democratic super majority in the Senate sure um thank you for having me back on Democracy Now it's really exciting to be here again um well 80 American 80 million

Americans have medical debt uh medical debt is a severe problem for folks um you already outlined some of the issues but I just want to point out that they're also profound racial disparities in medical debt 28 of African-American folks have medical debt versus 22 percent of white folks and um pardon me uh 22 of latinx folks and then 17 of white people have medical debt so

that is a profound problem for people one of the ways that medical debt is experienced is once you run into medical debt fairly quickly Health Care Providers and their collection agents report you to the big three credit reporting bureaus and you might think well at least they're not suing or what's the big deal but it is a big deal credit reports are used for people to

apply for jobs for applying for apartments for or applying for a loan for applying for a school loan and so it really has profound ramifications we were working with a guy that runs a tow truck business in Oneida Oneonta County and he basically having had to go to SUNY upstate hospital he ended up having a big ten thousand dollar bill it ruined his life he lost

his towing business he could not get more loans to buy more tow trucks or at least more tow trucks and his business went under this is what happens every single day to People by having medical debt reported on your credit report so we're really excited Colorado at first I want to just give a big shout out to The Advocates in Colorado but there's been this movement

around the country saying well wait a second why are we reporting medical debt in the first place it's not like people are buying a lot you know a new leather couch and racking up bills beyond their means people go to get health care mostly out of emergencies or medical necessity so why are are we reporting this in the first place but not only that when they

started analyzing with the experts analyzed what's on credit reports they found that they were Rife with errors in the area of medical debt so and we all know why right the insurance company doesn't build properly I mean the healthcare provider doesn't build the insurance properly the code is wrong the insurance company accidentally rejects it or intentionally rejects it who knows there's this whole back and forth

this dance between you know in our in our really weird Patchwork Healthcare System it's not that insurance companies responsibility different insurance companies responsibility who knows but anyways the medical debt that is on people's credit reports is more often than not shouldn't be there in the first place then on top of it all study after study has shown that when lenders look at credit reports and they

analyze medical debt that is not predictive of whether someone is a good lending risk or not so what's the point of having Incorrect and non-utility they're known utility medical debt on a credit report in the first place which is why now thanks to the assembly and the the Senate you know so 740 000 New Yorkers moving forward will no longer have medical debt on their credit

reports and we couldn't be more delighted here in New York and a big shout out again to our friends in Colorado who did it first we're second but we know many other states are considering the same piece of legislation now that the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said it was okay to pass this on the state level Elizabeth I wanted to ask you about another health

related issue the issue of a Medicaid Eligibility uh there was a huge increase during the pandemic and the number of people who were able to use Medicaid would lost their jobs but now starting in April this past April there's now a question a mandate to reevaluate eligibility what's going to be the impact on the of Medicaid enrollment as a result of this yeah um so what

happened is during the pandemic the federal government um I believe First under the Trump Administration and then in the Biden Administration said okay we're not going to force people to prove their life every year in order to maintain Medicaid coverage and also in New York state at Central plan coverage we're gonna just say you know people's incomes rarely change fluctuate during the year anyway we're just

going to roll them over and so that rolling over of everybody's Medicaid Eligibility and public coverage of Eligibility happen for about three years uh that you know the as we all know covid is uh has been declared eliminated or at least over and so on May 11th the administration said okay we're going to stop requiring states to continue that um that coverage uh you know uh

renewal automatic renewal and we're going to require the states over the next 14 months to take a look at their public Insurance roles and sort of slow and in New York state for example we're doing it batch by batch month by month we're having everybody come in and renew their coverage the very sad thing is that some states are not like New York and they just

kind of are just bombing through these renewals and just kind of kind of it seems it would appear that there is you know huge volume and disenrollments um we're lucky again in New York we have a a really different approach it's an all hands on deck approach we're um we were very lucky that we went to eight funders my own organization went to eight funders and

we had this great Consortium of new york-based funders who are giving micro grants through the community service Society of New York to um over 36 local community-based organizations covering nearly every single County of New York to kind of do boots on the ground Outreach local media buys to kind of tell people hey come in renew your coverage let's try to keep every single person who's eligible

on coverage over the next 14 months and so far it seems to be going pretty well in New York but not so well in other states and I think it just shows the different approach to whether you know people really State officials really value the importance of people having coverage which rethink is so fundamental to people being able to have effective and productive and healthy lives

Elizabeth I wanted to play a clip from we the patients New York which has spoken to many people struggling with medical debt this is Anthony calafura's story so slightly over a year ago from now I was committed to the psych ward after a failed suicide attempt I was there for 14 days it genuinely helped me until I received my bill afterwards but thankfully I was under

my estranged father's insurance but even then and currently today I'm over two thousand dollars in debt and my mother has refused to help me pay so I've essentially been forced to kind of figure out this whole situation by myself when I was committed I was 17 so after I got released when I tried calling like the hospitals there wasn't much I could do because I was

still a minor and it just felt like a circle and I never really got like actual advice on what to do now that I'm 18 it's been like six months since I've been released so all my dad has been transferred to the debt collection agency nobody around me really knows what to do and this whole situation has just been causing me so much stress it's like

every time I check my mail every time I receive an 866 call which now I know is the debt collection agency's number every time I see a minded text I'm just reminded of how much that I'm in and it just makes me really anxious and it's been really not good for my mental health which is why I'm even in debt in the first place was to

get better I think there should be a lot of change within the medical system I think in schools they should teach you about how Insurance works even how to manage debt for the most part I just felt really alone even when there are 23 million Americans in debt which is essentially one in 10 Americans in general the U.S Healthcare System people shouldn't have to go into

debt with like little knowledge on what to do after just to get the medical care that they need people also just shouldn't be afraid and resistant to go into the doctors in fear of the bill that they're going to receive after just before we go to the State Assembly member Elizabeth the significance of his age on the issue of medical debt yeah it's ridiculous um you

know if if his mother had you know disavowed him he would have been considered an emancipated minor he would have been eligible for Medicaid or Child Health Plus that hospital or mental health facility never should have put him into collections it's you know there's all these facilities in New York collect millions of dollars in Indigent care pool funds that could have been applied to his case

there's just no good reason for for him to have been put into collections and it it's actually heartbreaking and it's why we have these things like my agency Ron's called the consumer assistance program that was funded under the Affordable Care Act for the first year and then never funded again basically over Republican opposition not to fund these consumer Assistance programs that could help people like Anthony

like who was you know him who was completely eligible for coverage at the time it's just heartbreaking uh I want to bring in addition to Elizabeth Benjamin Jessica Gonzalez Rojas New York State Assembly member representing in the 34th District in Queens her op-ed and now the audio Tuesday was headlined the assembly can make history by passing health coverage for all assembly member can you start off

by talking about the significance of what it would mean I mean we're talking about a democratic super majority in the assembly already the Democratic super majority in the New York State Senate passed this why hasn't this bill been brought to the house floor and talk about exactly what it is so first off thanks for having me and thanks for talking about this important topic as I

mentioned in my op-ed this is an opportunity for us to make history this is a moment where we have a bill that will direct the Commissioner of Health to submit a federal waiver the 1332 waiver that would allow for us to use federal Surplus dollars in order to cover a population in our state our New York State undocumented residents who utilize health care and currently we're

spending our emergency Medicaid dollars to get their health care but what this bill would do is allow us to use federal Surplus money to allow them to enroll in our New York State health insurance plan called the essential plan this is groundbreaking because we have an opportunity to utilize Surplus federal dollars Washington State got this waiver approved Colorado got this waiver approved there is as you

mentioned no reason why we shouldn't be able to move forward it passed in the Senate we are an active conversations with our colleagues in the assembly we are in a special session right now and I'm still optimistic that we can push this through but we really just have today and some people what uh uh what does Governor hocal say about this why is she opposing it

I understand she claims it's going to cost two to three billion dollars annually and uh but uh your perspective is that it will actually in the long term save money to the state could you talk about the differences there absolutely this will not cost the state money and in fact we'll save the state uh about half a billion dollars in emergency Medicaid uh costs that we

bear as a state each year for the cost of care for our undocumented people and again these are folks that are in uh are in dire emergency and are ending up in the emergency room that is not Quality Health Care we can instead submit this Federal waiver to use federal dollars at no cost of the state and I want to be incredibly clear no cost to

the state to allow folks to enroll in our New York State essential plan again these two states have done it what we've added to the bill to make sure to guard against any concerns around costs is allow the commissioner to create guard rails they can cap the program they can limit it to a certain federal poverty level they could put a dollar amount but again this

these are the use of federal dollars we Garner our Surplus every year through a statute in the Affordable Care Act and we can we are pretty much guaranteed about two billion dollars of surplus funds every single year we've seen that since our program started in 2015 and this would just expand eligibility for those people uh who are new workers who are residents of New York and

would otherwise qualify except for the immigration status so this would allow those folks to enroll in health insurance be much healthier there are a lot low-cost Community our our immigrants are actually a very healthy community so it would actually bring down the cost for everyone to administer the program and perhaps can even Garner additional surplus funds you've mentioned these Federal surplus funds what are they exactly

and and where where are they hiding in the budget so they are money that when we created our New York State essential plan back in 2015 uh we had to submit a waiver that said that we would create our own state plan and the federal government will reimburse the state uh 95 of what they would spend because right now the the ACA requires a federal Marketplace

so they because we created our own state plan we had this agreement to get reimbursed like credits up to 95 percent of what the federal government would have spent well we're uh way under the cost of what the federal government was spent so we get reimbursed but we have actually accumulated about two billion dollars per year since the program started in 2015 and right now we're

sitting on about you know 11 billion dollar trust fund we cannot use that trust fund to cover the undocumented communities we have to submit the waiver that's directed in my bill call coverage for overall in order to be able to use future surplus funds but again we've garnered These funds since our program started our Central plan program in the state and we anticipate that we'll continue

to bring in those surplus funds and that pot of money can be used and we got a letter from the the federal centers for Medicaid and Medicare services that said yes you can use this surplus funds to cover undocumented communities again two other states have gotten this approval we should be next uh assembly member Gonzalez Rojas not that I comment on women's clothes who are our

guests but I can't help but notice that you're wearing a necklace that says daughter of an immigrant if you can talk about the significance of what this means and also the support that your bill has gotten from a hundred unions Health Plan providers Community organizations that have signed a letter to the assembly police speaker Hasty urging the passage of this bill yeah this I mean personally

as a daughter of an immigrant my father's from this teeny tiny country in South America called Paraguay um he came in the 60s and you know he came in with legal as a legal permanent resident but I represent a district in Western Queens Jackson Heights East Elmhurst Corona Woodside Astoria that has such a large immigrant community and many many who are undocumented so it was personally

as a daughter of an immigrant and someone who represents a district that has a vibrant a vibrant immigrant population many who are undocumented many who were those essential workers who ensure that we survive during this pandemic they were out there you know providing those essential Services deliveries they were Street vendors they were people at the front lines they deserve health care and as was mentioned we

had tremendous support I mean we have everyone from the Business Council to the greater New York Hospital Association to countless unions a Health Care Union DC 37 rwdsu we have advocacy organizations we have tremendous support the previous Health Commissioner of New York State Mary Bassett submitted comments in support of expanding coverage for our undocumented Community under this fed waiver so we don't understand why the governor's

resistance she said that she would work with the federal government last year because we were very close to getting this done last year she said she'd work with the federal government we've been working with the federal government then she said she wanted a letter of guidance from the federal government we got that letter of guidance on June 6. so that's sort of fast tracked the bill

we were very fortunate to get our Senate sponsor Senator Gustavo Rivera who is a big fan of the show he was able to move the bill in the Senate so again there's no reason why we shouldn't get this done in the assembly it's really a win-win-win for the state for our communities with the tremendous amount of diverse support that's behind this yeah I wanted to bring

in Elizabeth Benjamin again just a quickly because we don't have much time but Elizabeth could you give us a quick sense of what has been happening with the thousands of Asylum Seekers that have been sent here by Republicans in in governors in Texas and Florida what's their situation in terms of health care access well they're actually already eligible um they're lawfully present because they've you know

registered themselves at the border they've applied for Asylum so this this Surplus is really for our long time essential workers who work their you know work their their bone their fingers to the bones throughout the pandemic and really for the long time immigrant population who's already here many of them as assembly woman Gonzalez Rojas said are already availing themselves of the emergency Medicaid Program at Great

cost to the state of New York and the federal government we would be saving combined a billion dollars a year if we just went for the this coverage for all Bill and had the federal surplus funds be used instead so people could have comprehensive coverage for all of their you know their regular preventive Health vaccinations everything they could then get as opposed to this episodic willy-nilly

high cost emergency room care so I I think assemblywoman Gonzalez Rojas just nailed it the time is now we must do this um that our waiver is already pending before the federal government all we need to do is amend it to include immigrants the math is done we're ready Freddy let's get this done Elizabeth Benjamin vice president of Health initiatives at the community service Society of

New York and Jessica Gonzalez Rojas New York State Assembly member thanks so much for joining us