New Orleans        Dr. Alister Martin is New York City’s health commissioner, and he’s a hero of the people in my book.  Even better, he’s singing our song and doing so loudly and clearly, when it comes to keeping people on Medicaid against the Trump and Republican assault of the big bad budget bill becoming fully effective January 1, 2027.  Critically, 80-hour per month work requirements will be imposed across the country then, and coupled with the other requirements are deliberately intended to make it difficult for eligible families to remain covered under Medicaid and to push them off through a thousand bureaucratic hurdles.

Dr. Martin’s job is protecting the health of residents of New York City, but he’s also setting the example for state and local health commissioners across the country.  He knows he can’t do that if many of them are denied Medicaid. Estimates range from 1.5 to 2 million people that could be stripped of coverage in New York City. Dr. Martin understands that this is a battle. He also understands that on the other side is the President and his enablers who have to make the poor pay for the tax breaks he has given the rich.

We have been beating the drum, wherever people might listen, to the need to organize benefit recipients on the frontline of these attacks to also have the weapons and tools to pushback.  Dr. Martin and his allies in New York reportedly,

…are looking for ways to prove that patients are afflicted with addictions or are medically frail, conditions that would exempt them from the new restrictions.  And they are considering how to sign people up for volunteer work – such as helping other New Yorkers navigate Medicaid’s new rules – which would satisfy the law’s work requirements.

We’re organizers, so we can hardly certify people’s medical conditions, but we have been making the case wherever we can for BRAVO, the Benefit Recipients Access and Volunteer Organization, which would recruit recipients willing to satisfy the work requirements as volunteers, to act as navigators, advocates, and organizers to help people satisfy the requirements, stay on Medicaid, and navigate appeals and reapplications, if eligible and denied.  We saw this work in welfare rights organizing and in enrollment under Obama’s Affordable Care Act. We’ve been organizing and researching how to make this happen in states like Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas.

Sometimes, we’ve felt like a voice in the wilderness, so we would be more than happy to have Dr. Martin serve as John the Baptist and force this issue to the forefront.  He’s channeling our arguments reportedly,

Dr. Martin said he planned to partner with city officials to offer options for community service – which can satisfy the requirements, even if unpaid.  Dr. Martin has also begun thinking about how to mobilize underemployed New Yorkers to volunteer with the health department or public health care system, as a way to keep their health insurance.  ‘What if the volunteering that they were doing was helping other New Yorkers stay covered on Medicaid.”

Right on!

Conservatives think that volunteer work is “the biggest loophole” in the requirements.  To me that sounds like another endorsement.

What do we need to do to get everyone on this train!