U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra, Congressmember Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the House minority, and NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan toured the Advantage Care Physicians site in East New York, Brooklyn, on June 30 to speak with seniors about lowering the cost of prescription drugs.
East New York’s healthcare facility has the highest rate of Medicaid and Medicare participants in the state, with the majority being working-class Black and Latino residents, said Jeffries’s team. The group looked at the facility’s community center and clinic, which caters to the local senior population, and then held a roundtable with the AARP representatives at the site.
Anna Ortiz, 68, a native of Puerto Rico before moving to the neighborhood decades ago, said she enjoys the fitness classes at the center. She was recently dealing with a bout of long COVID and is slowly regaining her mobility. She said she often runs into doctors at hospitals in Brooklyn who don’t listen to her effectively. Her and her friend, Sarah Bryant, 65, were waiting in the lobby, interested in seeing the congressmember and his cohort.
On April 1, Congress’s public health emergency order to keep people automatically enrolled in Medicaid expired, leaving millions of people to figure out if they’re still eligible for coverage. Health advocates were worried the re-enrollment process would drop millions of people of color in low-income neighborhoods.
Jeffries said on a state-by-state basis, the success of re-enrolling people to make sure they don’t lose healthcare coverage has varied in the last few months, with New York State and New York City faring better than most other states. “The legislation we’ve been working on from the Affordable Care Act all the way through the Inflation Reduction Act has made significant progress in bringing [rights] to life, but there’s still more work to be done there,” said Jeffries.
Regional Clinical Director Adina Jones, RN, said the clinic strives to connect community members of all ages to services, especially elderly patients. Many patients have challenges in accessing food and shelter in addition to Medicaid and Medicare prescriptions.
“A lot of them don’t have a lot of family, so they need someone to help and support them,” said Jones. “Our nurses teach them self-management and how to take their medications.”
In August 2022, House Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which lowers health insurance premiums, allows for negotiating the price of Medicare’s prescription drugs, provides free vaccines, and caps the price of insulin at $35 a month for seniors.
“Americans pay more for lifesaving prescription drugs than any other country that is developed in the world,” said Jeffries at the press conference.
Becerra said there has been great opposition to the new law from electeds and drug companies, and that the Biden administration has been sued four times by Big Pharma drug companies. “What are they afraid of?” Becerra asked.
Vasan agreed that the law would be transformative for healthcare. He spoke about the city’s move to open a new office of healthcare accountability to monitor prescription and healthcare prices.
“I see this every day in the lives of my patients, who…who are struggling to pay for medication, making life-determining choices about whether to pay for drugs, pay for rent, pay for food or transportation,” said Vasan. “No one in America, no one in Brooklyn, no one in the city of New York should have to make those tough choices in 2023.”
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.