Quality healthcare for every New Yorker is the future. Medical debt should be a thing of the past.
We build power with patients and care workers for quality, comprehensive healthcare as a human right. Our members organize with partners across the state and country to end medical debt, hold private health insurance companies accountable for denying patients care; and establish universal healthcare for all—regardless of employment, income, age, or immigration status.
Learn about our platform for affordable, comprehensive, and quality healthcare for all.
Pass the New York Health Act
We are proud members of the Campaign for New York Health, a state-wide coalition of patients, healthcare workers, and advocates fighting to pass universal healthcare in New York. The New York Health Act will establish a single-payer healthcare system that will guarantee comprehensive and affordable health coverage for all New Yorkers. That means everyone will get quality care regardless of employment, income, age, or immigration status. It includes long-term care to ensure that elders and folks with disabilities get the care they need while their caregivers are compensated for their labor.
End Medical Debt
Thanks to our organizing with the End Medical Debt Coalition, New York has become the first state to protect patients from having their credit scores ruined by medical debt—and to ban facility fees for preventative care! Medical debt disproportionately burdens the financial health of Black and brown patients, and thirty-eight percent of New Yorkers have avoided care or sacrificed other necessities because of the cost of health care. The leading source of debt for people across the country, medical debt is not only a critical barrier to accessing care but also to building generational wealth for our people in the Bronx.
Put Care Over Cost
As part of People's Action’s Care Over Cost Campaign, we organize the Bronx to put an end to unjust care denials. Hundreds of millions of people are denied healthcare every year by their private insurers. We are stuck with bills we can’t pay, take money from rent and food, and go bankrupt. Meanwhile, insurance companies rake in tens of billions in profits, while inflating prices and over-compensating executives. These profits are taken through inflated premiums paid from the pockets of working people. All across the country, people are fighting individual care denials and winning the care they deserve!
we are winning!
We passed the Fair Medical Debt Reporting Act, making New York the first state in the country to prevent hospitals and health providers from reporting medical debt to credit bureaus.
We passed legislation making New York the first state to ban facility fees for preventative care and require patients to be told about them beforehand.
We reformed Hospital Financial Assistance Law to prohibit hospitals from suing patients with incomes below 400% of the Federal Poverty Level, eliminate the “asset test” to prove low-income status, limit the size of monthly payments for medical debt, and prohibit hospitals from denying care due to unpaid medical bills.
Take action for healthcare as a human right!
Tell your legislators to End Medical Debt:
hold a workshop on how to eliminate medical debt from credit historY, fight individual care denials, and join our campaigns:
We address poor health outcomes at the root through community-led health training and planning.
Located in one of the most affluent yet unequal and segregated cities, the Bronx has some of the worst health outcomes in the nation. This reality is not by mistake but by design.
We train Bronx residents to identify the root causes of poor health outcomes beyond individual choice—or social determinants of health. We then build leadership of local residents to develop community health action plans that address systemic barriers.
Through this model of participatory community health planning, Bronx residents identified housing, unemployment, and violence as top barriers to health and developed an innovative program to create healthier housing, high-road local jobs, and environmental justice.
The Bronx Healthy Buildings Program is a cross-sector initiative to address upstream causes of high asthma rates in the Bronx and promote holistic community health.
Our holistic approach eliminates asthma triggers in the home, builds tenant leadership to address poor building conditions, reduces energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions, and invests in high road jobs and community-based contractors.
As we connect landlords with capital investment for infrastructure improvements, we leverage financing tools and regulatory agreements that ensure building upgrades will not displace residents through rent increases. We train Bronx residents for careers in integrated pest management and as community health researchers.
Buildings connected to our Healthy Buildings Program have seen dramatic reductions in the frequency of asthma-related visits to the hospital:
Visits to St. Barnabas Hospital (SBH) decreased by 68% overall and 37% for Medicaid patients.
Hospitalizations at SBH decreased by 91% overall and 87% for Medicaid patients,
Emergency room visits to SBH decreased by 67% overall and 53% for Medicaid patients.
read community-based research on how healthy buildings successfully ensures community health:
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