BCW Continues to Urge Opposition to Single-Payer Bill

As the New York State Legislature ends its session this week, the BCW continues to urge its members to get in touch with their legislators and implore them to once again block passage of the New York Health Act. “This disastrous plan comes with a price tag of as much as $250,000,000 per year and will cost 161,000 jobs in New York,” said BCW Executive Vice President and COO John Ravitz. He urged BCW members to “contact legislators today and tell them to reject this job-eliminating legislation. They should be working to create and retain jobs instead of eliminating them.”

Ravitz told the Business Journals, “The state can’t afford it. The Business Council was what is called ‘navigators’ during the early years of the New York State Affordable Care Act, the Health Exchange, and we helped enroll thousands of Westchester residents who had not been receiving health care into the system, and the system is working. To dismantle that system makes no sense whatsoever after the State Legislature only passed it six or seven years ago.”

According to the BCW’s Legislative Agenda for 2022, the cost of creating a single-payer health insurance system in New York State would be catastrophic. Independent studies show that a single-payer system would prove to be very costly for the state as well as employers within the state, including a Rand study that found it would create a $210 billion tax burden.

“New York cannot afford and should not tear down its existing health care system that has already enrolled over 4.9 million New Yorkers in the past few years. Due to the implementation of the New York Health Exchange, New York currently covers 95 percent of its residents under a combination of private and public health plans. The legislation destroys the current system of health care coverage by banning the sale of private health insurance in New York State, while doing nothing to address the increasing costs of health care,” stated the BCW Legislative Agenda.

See single-payer article in Westchester Business Journal »