Source: Democrat and Chronicle

A new report examining racial disparities among Black New Yorkers raised this rhetorical question: Does every New Yorker have equal access to high quality and affordable healthcare?

The answer of course is no. The pandemic has laid this fact bare. Black New Yorkers are four times as likely to die from COVID than their white counterparts, underscoring the structural inequities in our healthcare system.

Consider this: 3.8 percent of White New Yorkers are uninsured compared to 5.6 percent of Black people and 10.1 percent of Latinos. In Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse and Westchester, communities of color are up to four times more likely to suffer from medical debt than their white counterparts.

One way we can ease the health and economic well-being of Black and brown New Yorkers is to pass the Patient Medical Debt Protection Act, which would provide critical protections for patients who are managing medical bills and debt.

Over the last five years, hospitals in New York have filed more than 50,000 lawsuits against patients –4,000 filed during the deadly pandemic. The median amount of these suits? Just $1,900 – amounts that do little to improve a hospital’s bottom line, but ruins those of their patients. Some of those sued were low- and moderate-income workers who became unemployed or ill during the pandemic.

Everyone acknowledges that our hospitals are on the front lines battling this pandemic. We applaud the doctors, nurses and first responders who care for patients, often while putting themselves at risk.

But it is also true that every New York hospital is a non-profit charity that pays no taxes and receives millions in funding from the Indigent Care Pool (ICP) to offset treating the uninsured. A Community Service Society report documents how hospitals most likely to sue patients have retained substantial windfalls in ICP funds that could have been spent on providing financial assistance to patients, but were not.

Current state law permits these charities to hound their patients into debt through collection actions, lawsuits, liens and wage garnishments. Why this hospital exceptionalism against the charitable principle to protect and serve its beneficiaries?

Let’s also understand that New Yorkers are not incurring medical debt frivolously. They are forgoing needed medical care because of the costs. An Altarum Healthcare survey found that 45 percent of NewYork patients say they have delayed procedures, skipped a recommended medical test or treatment, cut pills in half, skipped doses of medications, or failed to fill a prescription because of costs.

The Patient Medical Debt Protection Act (A3470A/S2521A) would require hospitals to send a consolidated bill in a timely manner, limit the 9 percent interest rate that providers can tack on to judgments, require the state to develop a uniform financial process to be used by all hospitals, and protect patients from surprise bills related to misinformation, vague financial liability forms and bogus facility fees.

PMDPA is not a cure-all to our healthcare inequities. But it will help protect vulnerable New Yorkers who should not be afraid to seek health care when they need it.

Hazel N. Dukes is president of the NAACP New York State Conference; Seanelle Hawkins, ED.d, is president and CEO of the Urban League of Rochester, NY; and Arva Rice is president and CEO of the New York Urban League, Inc.