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Q&A
Council Member Schulman questions Acting Commissioner Morse on federal budget cut impacts
3:45:55
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127 sec
Council Member Lynn Schulman inquires about the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's analysis of proposed federal budget cuts, particularly those passed by the House of Representatives. Acting Commissioner Michelle Morse provides insights on potential impacts, including significant cuts to Medicaid and health insurance programs, affecting millions of New Yorkers.
- Morse estimates $13.5 billion could be lost for New York State's Medicaid and Essential Plan, potentially causing 1.5 million New Yorkers to lose health insurance access.
- Concerns raised about cuts to coverage for immigrant New Yorkers and negative impacts on preventive care access.
- Schulman requests that DOHMH share their analysis with the City Council to ensure alignment in understanding the potential impacts.
Lynn Schulman
3:45:55
During your testimony, you said you're paying close attention to the proposed public health and health care funding cuts in the White House budget.
3:46:03
The budget that was passed by the Congress, by the House of Representatives, have you had a chance to do a breakdown of that yet or not?
3:46:12
Yet?
Michelle Morse
3:46:12
We are analyzing that budget that was just passed out of the house about thirty six hours ago.
3:46:19
We're looking very closely at We're quite concerned about it, not only because of the Medicaid cuts but because of a number of major potential impacts including SNAP impacts and other One of the things that we are looking into specifically is what would be the impacts on not only Medicaid enrollment but also on the essential plan.
3:46:41
The governor's statement suggested that her estimate is about $13,500,000,000 will be lost from for New York State for Medicaid and the essential plan and that something like 1,500,000 New Yorkers across the state will lose access to health insurance.
3:46:58
We're currently at the lowest rate of uninsurance that we've ever had in the history of New York State, so any cuts to health insurance programs like Medicaid or the essential plan will definitively make New Yorkers less healthy and have less access to care and be forced in many cases unfortunately to use emergency rooms or other services instead of getting the preventive care that we know New Yorkers need.
3:47:23
So we're very concerned.
3:47:24
We're looking at it very closely.
3:47:25
We're also concerned about potential cuts to coverage for immigrant New Yorkers that were described in the bill that was passed.
3:47:32
Right.
3:47:33
And we are working very closely with city hall and many of our other stakeholders to make it very clear that the impacts would be definitively negative for the health of New York City if this budget passes.
Lynn Schulman
3:47:45
Would you be willing to share some of that information with us?
3:47:48
So I mean, have we're doing our own analysis obviously, but just to see just to compare and make sure we're all because I think it's so important that we're on the same page on I wanna thank you for your testimony.