Governor Pataki's Proposal to Cut Facilitated Enrollment for Working Families Denies Them Access to NY Public Health Insurance
Monday, February 14, 2005

Report released today shows that community-based facilitated enrollment is an effective and cost efficient investment to ensure that New York's public health insurance programs reach hard-working families.

For Immediate Release:

February 14, 2005

Contacts:

Erin Davis, CDF-NY, 212-697-2323 x 107, edavis@cdfny.org.

Ellen Lubell, The Children’s Aid Society, 212-949-4938.

Toni is a hard-working mother raising three daughters near Lake Champlain. Toni’s job does not provide health insurance and without it she and her daughters have not always gotten the healthcare they need. Toni could not afford eyeglasses for one daughter or to see her own doctor for a simple infection. Toni ended up with a $400 bill from the emergency room just to treat her infection.

Frustrated by her inability to get insurance, Toni connected with the Upper Hudson Primary Care Consortium, a community-based facilitated enrollment program. With their help, Toni and her children were able to apply for and get the health insurance they need to stay healthy and keep working.

Albany, NY On the heels of Governor Pataki’s proposal in the 2005-2006 Executive Budget to eliminate facilitated enrollment for adults and to cut nearly 60 percent ($10 million) of funding to community organizations that assist children, teens and adults to enroll in public health insurance, “Community-based Facilitated Enrollment: Meeting Uninsured New Yorkers Where They Are,” a report released today by The Children’s Aid Society and Children’s Defense Fund New York, shows that facilitated enrollment is an effective and cost efficient investment to ensure that New York’s public health insurance programs reach the hard-working families and individuals who need them.

The report, funded by the Altman Foundation, describes the work of the more than 100 communitybased facilitated enrollment agencies funded by New York State to conduct locally tailored outreach and enrollment into public health insurance programs. The work of these organizations has been enormously successful. Since 2000, they have enabled more than 600,000 children, teens and adults to enroll into public health insurance. Thousands more have been helped with the often difficult annual renewal process required every 12 months for people to keep their insurance.

Launched in 2000, the facilitated enrollment program uses community-based agencies and health plans to find and enroll “hard-to-reach” New Yorkers who have been left out of public health insurance. Facilitated enrollment is one of the country’s most innovative programs for enrolling the uninsured.

Philip Coltoff, Chief Executive Officer at The Children’s Aid Society, states: "Facilitated enrollment has become the doorway through which hundreds of thousands of working families enter public health insurance. Eliminating facilitated enrollment is in effect closing that door." Without facilitated enrollment, an hourly employee would have to miss 2-3 mornings of work and wages to go to a Medicaid office to apply for Family Health Plus. An upstate farmer would have to drive 60 miles to the nearest Medicaid office and return the next day with his tax forms and children’s birth certificates. A restaurant worker might go to a Medicaid office but turn away when she cannot find someone who speaks her language. Today, all of these New Yorkers can apply for health insurance in their communities. Coltoff continues, "Closing the facilitated enrollment door for adults will disproportionately affect working families and rural, immigrant and other "hard-to-reach" communities that have historically been left out of our public health insurance programs."

Donna Lawrence, Executive Director of Children’s Defense Fund New York, says: “By eliminating facilitated enrollment for families and cutting funding to community-based programs, Governor Pataki is denying hard-working families’ access to New York’s public health insurance programs. Enrollment into health insurance will come to a screeching halt and we can predict a reversal in the significant progress that has been made in reducing the number of uninsured children and adults in New York State.”

With the creation of facilitated enrollment and health insurance program simplifications and expansions, New York has created a more rational and effective health insurance system for working families. As a result of these efforts, the number of uninsured children in New York State has dropped by 34 percent from 729,000 to 479,000 in just five years. More low-income adults are also getting the health care they need to stay healthy and working.

Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, Chair of the Assembly’s Health Committee, states: “Almost half of New York’s uninsured are eligible for free or low-cost coverage, but red tape and barriers of language, transportation, literacy and the inability to miss work to apply keep them from getting enrolled.Facilitated enrollment is essential to removing these barriers so that those who are eligible actually get coverage.”

Lawrence calls on the Governor and state legislature to “work together to restore these cuts and to resubmit a budget that adequately addresses the health care needs of New York’s most vulnerable children and families.”

To view the full report go to www.childrensaidsociety.org or www.cdfny.org.