The New York Times
December 17, 2001
Excerpt from the letter of David Jones, President, Community Service Society of New York:
“In New York, there have been more than 100,000 new Medicaid applicants since the state began its disaster-relief Medicaid program after the events of Sept. 11. This dramatic response brings to the fore a significant problem: the many people in need of health coverage but not enrolled in programs.”
Comment: Current political approaches to the problem of the uninsured are limited to the concerns of those individuals losing coverage because the September 11 disaster and because of the recession. Attempts to expand public programs for the chronically uninsured, especially Medicaid and S-CHIP, are failing because of balanced-budget mandates at the state level.
If a publicly administered program of universal health insurance had been in place, we would not be concerned about these issues since everyone would already have coverage. Instead, the political debate would be over debt management and taxation, a debate that we already have and always will have. Wouldn’t it be better to assure health care coverage for everyone and then go back to the tables and limit our debate to tax policy?