A health care push (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
Recent estimates suggest that there are approximately 245,000 New Yorkers — our friends, caregivers, laborers, and neighbors who do not have health insurance simply because they do not have a qualifying immigration status. With the three-year mark of the first known COVID-19 case in New York in our rear view, we now know all too well the importance of a strong healthcare delivery system, investments in public and population health, and access to healthcare.
Because of federal restrictions, individuals without qualifying immigration status are ineligible for insurance coverage options that are federally funded, locking them out of primary and preventive care. New York State currently provides state-funded coverage for income-eligible children and pregnant individuals regardless of immigration status. Further, New York State provides Medicaid and CHIP coverage for qualifying immigrant children and pregnant people. Now New York State could expand coverage to all low-income people regardless of immigration status.
Currently, the Governor and leaders of the State Senate and Assembly are negotiating the next state budget. The Legislature, in their one-house budget resolutions, modified the Executive's proposal to expand the Essential Plan through a 1332 State Innovation Program waiver, which could secure federal funding to expand eligibility to all New York residents including immigrants currently not eligible for the Essential Plan. Coverage expansion is critical because we know that insurance impacts how individuals access needed care. Disease that might be preventable becomes chronic because of delays in accessing care. And these delays result in more costly and often complex treatments and lead to worse health outcomes.
Immigrants are part of the bedrock of New York State from Buffalo to Brooklyn, Rochester to Rockland, Staten Island to Syracuse, Potsdam to Poughkeepsie.
The expansion of the Essential Plan will also lead to savings for New York State. Currently, individuals who are undocumented can access costly emergency Medicaid, but with this Essential Plan expansion, we are investing in the care for these individuals and investing in the entire healthcare delivery system. Today, the costs related to uncompensated care places a burden on our safety net hospitals and community clinics that are a critical component of the healthcare delivery system in New York.
We all have a responsibility to reduce access and enrollment barriers including language access, education on the American medical system, and addressing legitimate fears to ensure that this population has access to the affordable, high-quality healthcare they deserve.
Our health depends on it.
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Dr. Ashwin Vasan is New York City health commissioner. Murad Awawdeh is Executive Director of New York Immigration Coalition. Dr. Talya Schwartz is President and CEO MetroPlusHealth.
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Gov. Hochul talks climate (photo: Governor's Office)
New York is poised to ban fossil fuels in new buildings statewide. A politically popular priority of New York’s grassroots climate movement, the law would be the first of its kind in the country. With the Governor, Senate, and Assembly on board, they can make it happen in the state budget that will be finalized any day now.
The key question that remains: how fast will they move to ban fossil fuels in new construction?
It is imperative that New York ban fossil fuels in new buildings starting in 2025, with no delays and no loopholes. New York City, Ithaca, and Beacon already have bold gas bans on the books that go into effect in 2024. The more lawmakers delay, the more fossil fuel profiteers lock their dirty fuels into New York’s energy mix, harming public health, deepening environmental injustice, and worsening the climate crisis.
Cleaning up building pollution also means stopping the projects meant to deliver more gas. One major fracked gas pipeline expansion will be decided this month — it must be stopped. The Iroquois Pipeline Company has a proposal before the state to substantially increase the amount of fracked gas moved through the 37-year-old pipeline that runs from the Canadian border to New York City and Long Island. To make it happen, the company has proposed doubling the size of four toxic compressor stations in the Hudson Valley and Connecticut
In addition to increasing climate pollution, the Iroquois gas expansion threatens public health. Compressor stations are toxic, noisy equipment linked to serious health risks. A Food & Water Watch analysis found that compressor stations emit ozone and smog-forming particulate matter linked to asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, low birth weights, and certain cancers. What’s more, homes near compressor stations report noise levels far exceeding guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with negative implications for quality of life and health, including sleep deprivation.
Iroquois’ gas expansion proposal is environmentally unjust. The compressor stations proposed for expansion are located in Athens and Dover, communities that already shoulder more than their fair share of fossil fuel infrastructure. Dover residents already live in the shadow of the massive Cricket Valley fracked gas power plant; next door, the Athens Generating Plant, which also runs on fracked gas, looms over homes and schools. It’s a sadly common story, where the same communities are required over and over again to bear an ever increasing burden of pollution. At a time when we need to be moving off fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we can’t keep dumping more pollution on these communities.
The Iroquois gas expansion would also undermine our state’s climate goals. By 2030, New York must reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions 40% – 85% by 2050. These targets are ambitious, but they are also achievable – unless we continue to allow new fossil fuel infrastructure in New York. To date, Governor Hochul has rejected several fracked gas power plants, but greatly expanding an existing pipeline’s capacity, with all the attendant increases in greenhouse gas emissions, is just as destructive to a livable future as building one from scratch.
Last but not least, Iroquois’ gas expansion proposal is profoundly unnecessary. New York City is making bold strides off fossil fuels, from Local Law 97 to the new construction gas ban. As of next year, buildings — our largest polluters — will be getting off gas. Iroquois’ proposal flies in the face of our local laws. Even the EPA has weighed in, writing that the Iroquois pipeline expansion proposal is unnecessary and out of alignment with state and federal climate policies.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released last month was clear: fossil fuels have got to go. It’s up to states like New York to lead the way in ending our reliance on destructive fuels like fracked gas. Governor Hochul and the Legislature must enact a prompt ban on fossil fuels in new buildings starting in 2025 in the state budget and reject the Iroquois Pipeline expansion.
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Laura Shindell is a Senior New York Organizer with the national advocacy organization Food & Water Watch. She is based in Queens. On Twitter @LShindell & @foodandwater.
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Seeking big numbers when it comes to investment in children (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
The drumbeat of headlines suggesting youth-on-youth gun violence is skyrocketing in New York City and State may be attention-grabbing, but these headlines are profoundly misleading. New Yorkers are right to be concerned about safety in their communities. However, reverting to failed, punitive policies of the past is not the answer.
Gun violence is real, and children are far more likely to be a victim of gun violence than the perpetrator. For example, in 2021 in New York City (the last year with full-year data available), of 2,011 shooting incidents on record, 95 incidents were perpetrated by a minor. Only 28 of those shooting incidents met the description of a minor perpetrator harming a minor victim; while in 156 of all incidents a minor was the victim.
While similar gun violence data is not available for all of New York State, state level data does illustrate declining youth crime in New York City and State. Youth arrests have fallen by 80% over the last decade and arrests for major (index) crimes are similarly down 79%.
When youth under 18 years of age engage in shootings and other serious crimes, under New York’s Raise the Age law, they are held accountable. All 16- and 17-year-olds charged with felonies are arraigned in the Youth part of adult Criminal Court. If they are charged with a shooting or even displaying a deadly weapon, or of causing significant physical injury, the case stays in adult court, where adult sentencing applies.
Cases that begin in or are removed to Family Court can result in detention, individual and family-based counseling, intensive case management, and access to educational and mentoring supports, as well as short- and longer-term court-ordered residential placement. Characterizing Raise the Age as diminishing accountability is wrong.
Advancing policies and budgetary commitments that improve community safety and child and family well-being should always be paramount. Shamefully, misguided calls to criminalize children and youth not only ignore the facts on Raise the Age, but they also distract from other sobering statistics that should have every New Yorker and elected representative pressing for urgent and immediate action.
There are more than 4 million children in New York State and over 700,000 of them live in poverty; more than 114,000 are homeless. More than 800,000 households with children in New York report not having enough food to eat. The state’s subsidized child care system reaches less than 10% of eligible children. And while there is little public data on the behavioral health status of all children, 20% of female and 17% of male students in New York report having considered suicide in the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for children and youth 10 to 24 years of age. These issues demand attention.
Child poverty, homelessness, hunger, and the behavioral health crisis should be the statistics making headlines, and state leaders must ask themselves: what am I prepared to do to address these pressing needs?
New York’s children and families deserve a state budget that makes meaningful investments in them - lifting incomes by raising the minimum wage and implementing tax reforms for and expanding child care to low-income households; addressing hunger by funding universal school meals; stabilizing housing and combating homelessness by supporting a statewide Housing Access Voucher Program; improving young child development and family stability by investing in early intervention and child welfare prevention; and addressing the child and adolescent behavioral health crisis by investing heavily in community-based clinical services.
The state budget must also do more than simply appropriate Raise the Age resources but must ensure all counties, including New York City, and community-based youth programs within them, access the funds.
Prioritizing these investments as Fiscal Year 2024 state budget negotiations are finalized is the surest path to safety, recovery, and well-being for all New Yorkers.
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Jennifer March is Executive Director of Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York. On Twitter @JenMarchCCC & @CCCNewYork.
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