Getting medical attention when we need it should be an everyday fact of our lives. Access to healthcare should not depend on income, employment, marriage or legal status. It’s time to build a system that puts our well-being first, and guarantees universal care for all.

• Eliminate copays and guarantee universal healthcare and long-term care for all New Yorkers by passing the New York Health Act. This would give New Yorkers access to the full spectrum of healthcare, including mental, dental, vision, and reproductive care.
• Extend healthcare coverage to all New Yorkers, no matter where we were born, or our immigration status, by passing Coverage for All. This will bring healthcare to over 154,000 people currently excluded.

Those who work tirelessly to keep us healthy and safe should never have to struggle to do their job. Overworking and underpaying nurses, home aides, and other direct caregivers has created a worker shortage that endangers us all. Care work is essential and it’s time to act like it.

• End mandatory 24-hour shifts for home care workers, and increase their wages to be 150% the local minimum wage by passing the Fair Pay for Home Care Act. This would create a starting wage of $19.50 in the Hudson Valley.
  • End the shortage of home care workers who aid elders and the disabled.
• Implement Safe Staffing to ensure we are not compromising the well-being of patients by over-stretching nurses.
  • Eliminate the medicaid cap that factors into the under-funding of our hospitals, creating a two-tiered system. The medicaid reimbursement amount should depend on need.
  • Hold management accountable and prevent the kind of staff layoffs we’ve seen at hospitals like HealthAlliance Hospital in Kingston.
  • Create a direct funding stream that is needed to recruit, train, and retain over 16,000 new nurses and other direct care staff that are needed throughout the state.

Whether a person chooses to give birth or get an abortion, they have a right to the full healthcare options they need. We must make New York the “oasis” for reproductive rights it was once in the 1970’s, and we must fix our broken maternal care system.

• Improve access to maternal healthcare, especially in Black and brown communities where maternal mortality rates have historically been higher.
• Fund abortion providers and non-profit organizations whose primary function is to facilitate access to abortion care by passing the Reproductive Freedom and Equity Program Act (A10148)
• Protect legal abortion providers by prohibiting law enforcement from cooperating with out-of-state investigations related to abortion (A9615/S8778)
• Establish a state fund for abortion access and allows New Yorkers to contribute to the fund through their income tax returns (A1209/S757)
• Provide free at point of use universal healthcare coverage to all New Yorkers and those working full-time in the state, including for all reproductive health, by passing the New York Health Act (S5474/A6058).
• Ban all discrimination, including on the basis of pregnancy and pregnancy outcome, by passing the Equality Amendment (S8797),
• Make abortion pills available at all SUNY and CUNY campuses
• End abortion stigma through judgement-free sexual and health education

Public Health research shows mental health struggles, substance abuse, and the opioid crisis will not be solved through carceral punishment, but through compassionate, rehabilitative care. Too often, these resources and tools are withheld from all but the rich/celebrities—we must make them available to all.

• Ensure that compassionate mental health services will be the first responder to mental health crises, not armed police, by passing Daniel’s Law.
• Make new investments to dramatically increase access to harm reduction, outreach services, supportive housing and Medication-Assisted Treatment
• Fully fund and expand universal access to life-saving public health tools for all New Yorkers: opioid agonist treatment, naloxone, and harm reduction services
• Create safe injection sites, which are proven to reduce overdoses, including of opioids, and increase access to healthcare and rehabilitative services, by passing the Safer Consumption Services Act.
• Decriminalize buprenorphine, a vital treatment for opioid
• Expand inpatient services in Ulster County. The closure of the 60-bed mental health, detox, and rehab inpatient unit at Health Alliance hospital has left Ulster County with no other option than to travel to neighboring counties for these services, which has already proven to be dangerous.