Greg Serio Defends Healthcare in New York State

Sir, The assertion in your headline "Rest of US looks on as pioneering states blaze a trail in health insurance" (January 19) is not quite correct when describing the current state of play in this important policy area.

Massachussetts and California, both appropriately lauded for their comprehensive approaches to health coverage, and other states are actually following and lengthening a trail already laid out by advocacy groups long ago and originally cut several years ago by New York state. Indeed, lost in much of the recent euphoria over these newer initiatives is the fact that New York, as far back as 1999, identified assisting the working uninsured as a major policy priority, and set out not only to provide them with quality health insurance coverage, but to integrate this with existing programmes for their children, such as the federal Child Health Insurance Program. When New York undertook this initiative, it was virtually alone.

The result since the inception of the Family Health Plus and Healthy New York initiatives, together with a third component of expanding Medicaid, has been a rare reversal of the upward trend in the number of uninsured in the state, and greater co-ordination of health-insurance programmes for the entire family.

To be sure, these programmes still have challenges before them, notably increasing enrolments (even for the premium-free programmes, which may seem surprising to some), and the issue of inadequate coverage maintained by those in the middle class, and no one can be satisfied with the number of uninsured that remain. However, New York is in an enviable position of enjoying the strength of a solid foundation that others are just beginning to construct.

Gregory V. Serio,
Managing Director,
Park Strategies,
New York, NY 10178, US
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

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