Statement to the Rally for Health Care
Statement to the Rally for Health Care
By Howie Hawkins, Green Party candidate for Governor of New York
Amherst, NY, April 9, 2022
The death of Danny Desnoyers because he was denied medication by the for-profit Managed Medicaid program run by FidelisCare, a subsidiary of Centene, was an unnecessary tragedy.
That tragedy is rooted in the for-profit administration of both health insurance programs, including public programs like Medicaid. These for-profit managed care companies are living a lie. They say they provide medical care, but they increase their profits — and the obscenely high executive salaries of their management — by denying care.
Health care should not be a buy-or-die commodity where people with illnesses do not get the treatment they need and too often die for the bottom line of private insurance and managed care companies.
Health care should should be a guaranteed right provided by a public health care system.
I join you in calling for the resignation of Patrick Frawley as a Centene executive for putting profits before health care.
I also join you in calling for passage of the New York Health Plan, legislation that is pending in the state legislature to provide a universal public health care system in New York State that will cover all medically necessary services of all New York residents.
The New York Health Plan will give patients full freedom to choose their medical providers.
By eliminating the administrative overhead of fighting private insurance and managed care companies to pay for the medical services they are supposed to cover, this single public payer will cover everybody at less cost. It will be funded by progressive taxes at no cost to patients at the point of service.
95% of us will pay less in taxes for health care than we now pay in taxes for public health care programs and in premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and uncovered and denied services to private insurance and managed care companies.
The New York Health Plan will mean everybody in and nobody out. It will means no one will die an unnecessary death like Danny Desnoyers did.
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