Press Release
CSS Applauds Mayor Adams for Advocating for Immigrant Coverage in State Budget
This week, Mayor Adams added his voice to the chorus of hospitals, insurers, unions, doctors, and patient advocates urging Governor Hochul to include immigrant coverage in the state budget. In a March 27 letter to the governor, the mayor cited the state and city’s shared commitment to dismantling “structural barriers, rooted in racism and bias, that perpetuate disparate health outcomes in immigrant communities” to call on the Hochul Administration to seize the opportunity to expand health coverage—by securing federal funding to do so through a 1332 Waiver.
Of the more than one million uninsured New Yorkers in the state, about 400,000 are undocumented immigrants residing in New York City. They pay taxes, contribute to the city’s economic vibrancy and deserve health insurance. Should Albany lawmakers pass a budget that excludes health coverage for undocumented adults, ages 19 to 64, New York City and State will pay the price—by continuing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to support programs to care for the uninsured.
In her first budget, the Community Service Society (CSS) applauded Governor Hochul for expanding health coverage to undocumented seniors and pregnant people as an important first step to promoting health equity overall. At the time, the governor asked for patience as her administration searched for a solution to tackling the larger issue of extending coverage to all immigrants of all ages, something she indicated she would pursue through applying for a Section 1332 Waiver under the Affordable Care Act.
Seeking federal funding for immigrant coverage through the 1332 Waiver makes economic sense, and would yield enormous savings to New York, not the least of which is the more than $500 million the state currently spends annually on the Emergency Medicaid program. Moreover, other states including Colorado, California and Washington state have used the Section 1332 federal waiver to pay for the coverage of their immigrant populations. As the Mayor points out: New York should do the same.
Yet, when the governor released her budget earlier this year, it included Waiver authorization language that actually excluded immigrant coverage. Since that time, the broader health care community have urged lawmakers to act to ensure that Waiver language covering health insurance for immigrants is in the budget.
We applaud Mayor Adams for using his considerable influence to move the needle on this critical issue. To be sure, there are other policy and funding matters that the city and state will debate. But as the mayor eloquently expressed in his letter, expanding health coverage to historically underserved New Yorkers is “an imperative of both moral and economic consequence.” We could not agree more.