With a little more than a month to go before the New York State budget is passed, immigrant groups, activists and elected officials who are part of the #Coverage4All coalition on Wednesday increased pressure on state lawmakers to that they pass the Coverage for All Law (known in English as ‘Coverage for All’), which would allow all New Yorkers, including the undocumented, to access low-cost and even free medical services.
After a march on Wednesday to the Capitol in Albany, where negotiations are currently taking place to agree on the budget that must be approved no later than 19 April, the protesters then held a vigil in which they remembered the thousands of people who died due to COVID-19, and did not have health insurance, thousands of them immigrant essential workers.
The ‘Coverage for All’ creates would be a State-funded health coverage option for all New Yorkers with incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty line regardless of your immigration status. Both the Assembly and Senate Health Committees approved their versions of the bill.
“It is imperative that all New Yorkers have access to affordable health insurance, regardless of their immigration status. Despite being on the front lines of this pandemic, thousands of low-income immigrant New Yorkers are still struggling with the effects of the pandemic and unable to access comprehensive care,” said Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. York (NYIC), adding that the Governor, the Senate and the Assembly “can end this cruel disparity in access to health care by including that law in the budget.”
Meanwhile, Selene A., a member of ‘ Make the Road New York’ (MRNY), said that without health insurance and living with various health conditions caused by COVID-, “I am unable to access all the necessary care and medications that I desperately need. I suffer from sinusitis and now I find it harder to breathe. As a house cleaner, I often put myself and my family at risk for exposure to covid. If I had access to health insurance, I could put my health first, get treatment for my symptoms, and live a better life.”
Hispanic women legislators give their support
“After approving and implementing the Excluded Workers Fund, we constantly heard that New Yorkers who received relief used the money to pay overdue medical debt. Approving Coverage for All is evidence that we have learned from the pandemic, what we are learning from the injustices that the crisis only exposed, and building a true safety floor that does not allow anyone to fall,” said State Senator Jessica Ramos .
And Assemblywoman Jessica González-Rojas stressed that the action that the defenders and “all of us are carrying out today is not hyperbolic. Undocumented New Yorkers are dying across this state because they are the most vulnerable among us to health care disparities. And yet, these are the same New Yorkers, our neighbors, who got up every day to help our state manage the coronavirus pandemic and continue to help us as we recover. They don’t need applause. They need medical attention. Therefore, I am calling on our state legislature, leadership, and governor to include Coverage for All in our budget.”
After the press conference, the protesters marched throughout the Capitol, ending with a ‘vigil for the dead’ outside the legislative building in which they cried for the fatalities left by COVID-19 among immigrants, denouncing that many were due to lack of access to medical care, which left them very vulnerable during the worst of the pandemic.
“Immigrant New Yorkers have been disproportionately affected by COVID- 19, dying at twice the rate of white New Yorkers since the pandemic began,” denounced the #Coverage4All coalition.