The longtime chairman of the Assembly Health Committee on Wednesday released a lengthy essay on the potential impacts on health-care policy by the incoming Donald Trump presidential administration.
Those concerns raised by Assemblyman Dick Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat, range from the new federal administration gutting medical marijuana laws on the state level, scaling back benefits for Medicaid recipients and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which could blow a $2 billion hole in the state budget.
“The first step in stopping or reversing these attacks is to clearly understand what’s at stake and spread the word,” Gottfried wrote in the statement released by his office. “There is hardly anything more rigged against working people than health care. The Trump-Republican agenda will make it worse.
Gottfried’s solution to bolster health care in New York under Trump is his long-stalled proposal for universal coverage in New York through a single-payer system.
“Instead of regressive premiums, deductibles, co-pays and out-of-network charges, it would be funded fairly through broad-based taxes based on ability to pay,” Gottfried wrote. “The Assembly passed the bill in 2015 and 2016 – helping to move it from being “a great idea that could never happen” to something really achievable. In 2017, we will continue to work to build public support so it can ultimately pass the Senate.”
