Richard Gottfried, chair of the Assembly Health Committee, will be at Rochester’s City Council Chambers today to hold the second of 6 hearings about universal health care in New York State.
Gottfried, who has been working for a single-payer system since the early 90s, is a key sponsor of the New York Health Act that would do away with health insurance in the state, replacing it with a universal coverage system.
The assembly member says even with improvements under the Affordable Care Act, in his view the health care system is broken.
"The fundamental flaw is that it leaves us in the hands of insurance companies with rising premiums, and out of sight deductibles and co-pays, and narrow, restricted networks and having to pay out-of-pocket if you dare to go out of network. It's pretty clear that this is a system that can't work."
The universal system would be funded through a mix of federal funding and income-based costs under the state’s universal health plan.