New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (shown) announced during a news conference at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx on January 8 that the city will begin guaranteeing comprehensive healthcare to every single resident regardless of ability to pay or immigration status, meaning that even illegal aliens would qualify.
De Blasio said the plan will provide primary and specialty care, from pediatrics to OBGYN, geriatric, mental health, and other services, to the city’s roughly 600,000 uninsured, reported NBC in New York.
The city already has a public health insurance option that helps provide direct medical care to residents who are in the country illegally. De Blasio said that a new program called NYC Care will be added, under which patients who seek health coverage will receive a card that allows them to see a primary care doctor as well as specialists.
“The programs will include customer-friendly call lines to help New Yorkers — regardless of their insurance — make appointments with general practitioners, cardiologists, pediatricians, gynecologists and a full spectrum of health care services,” De Blasio’s office said in a release.
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“This has never been done in the country in a comprehensive way,” de Blasio said on MSNBC. “Health care isn’t just a right in theory, it must be a right in practice. And we’re doing that here in this city.”
“This is the city paying for direct comprehensive care (not just ERs) for people who can’t afford it, or can’t get comprehensive Medicaid — including 300,000 undocumented New Yorkers,” De Blasio’s press secretary, Eric Phillips, tweeted, using the common jargon for illegal aliens.
As we noted in an article yesterday, California’s new governor, Gavin Newsom, during an interview on “Pod Save America,” discussed his plan of providing universal healthcare — regardless of immigration status — when he was mayor of San Francisco. “San Francisco is the only universal health care plan for all undocumented residents in America, very proud of that, and we proved it can be done without bankrupting in the city,” Newsom said recently.
“I refuse the notion that [illegal aliens] don’t deserve health care,” De Blasio said. “It is not only the morally right choice, but it will save taxpayers in the end.”
Of course, everyone deserves healthcare, preferably paid for privately in a place where they are legally entitled to reside.
Image: Screenshot of NYC.gov
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