Read our full Report on the New York Health Act and the Buffalo Niagara Partnership here!

We write to the Buffalo Niagara Partnership (BNP) to alert them that their lobby efforts against the New York Health Act (NYHA) are exposed and we urge them to halt in the January 2025 legislative session.

Following the results of the 2024 election, we can expect to see efforts to accelerate the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, stripping of public Medicare and Medicaid, and an expansion of the role of private insurers in these programs. Alongside that, we hope to see a renewed movement for state-level universal healthcare, (e.g., New York Health Act) as a way to protect against existing and worsening dysfunction, privatization and runaway costs. January 2025 begins a new state legislative session, and a new opportunity for public oversight of private corruption.

The Buffalo Niagara Partnership, our local Chamber of Commerce, holds significant political power and influence on capital in our region. The way in which the BNP has wielded its power to lobby against universal healthcare is cruel and unacceptable. Everyday working people, who drastically outnumber the executives on BNP, deserve a single-payer healthcare system that works for everyone.

Every one of our region’s most-utilized health insurers (Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, Independent Health, and Univera) are not just in the membership but also on the leadership board of Buffalo Niagara Partnership. They are joined by every one of our major healthcare systems (Kaleida Health, Catholic Health, and even our public hospital Erie County Medical Center).

Many employers in the area, big and small, including social services organizations and healthcare providers, are in the membership body of the BNP. Check for your employer

• Buffalo Niagara Partnership recently published a poorly-researched Memorandum of Opposition against the New York Health Act
• The BNP CEO wrote a conspiratorial hand-wringing letter to the NY State Senate about the wealthy paying their share in a single-payer system
• The BNP is a member of the sketchy “Realities of Single Payer” effort
• For more about BNP’s profits, involvement in schemes like Medicare/Medicaid Advantage, and the impact of privatization on healthcare, read our full report.

The reality is, the system that healthcare CEOs cash in on is unnecessary, dysfunctional and wildly unpopular. Americans pay the highest cost for healthcare in the world with the worst outcomes, while New Yorkers pay the second highest premiums for their care in the US. The average New Yorker pays $10k per year on healthcare. ~1 million New Yorkers are uninsured and 11% are underinsured.

Meanwhile, our state has the most viable legislation in the country to eliminate and replace the source of this dysfunction – private, for-profit healthcare. The New York Health Act is legislation that would create statewide, universal, public or “single payer” healthcare where everyone who lives and works in NYS would be enrolled in the single, public insurance program. Not only would it expand/ensure coverage and improve the health of all New Yorkers, 90% of New Yorkers would save money on healthcare costs, an average of $2,800 per person.

This is where the BNP and others like them get it wrong. The NYHA would provide $80 billion in savings over 10 years, it is a self-sustaining program through its progressive-tax structure. These funds are already set aside for healthcare in the state. New York does not need to cut any essential or existing social programs to fund NYHA. Additionally, the NYHA would create 150,000 new jobs in the public sector and provide retraining for and rehiring of current private insurance workers. Public hospitals will benefit from a higher reimbursement rate which will improve chances of ending hospital closures.

The anti-universal-healthcare lobbying of your organization is an effort to enrich the insurance and health system executives on your leadership board. But it impacts so many more.

Your lobbying impacts employees of most major health systems in the area, whose care they provide is dictated and delayed by insurance companies.

It impacts social service organizations that work with the most vulnerable, underinsured, impoverished Western New York families and individuals.

It traps patients, clients, and people trying to keep their heads above water financially, in an uncaring, confusing system built for private profit.