Good times.

Posted January, 24 2012 by arianne

From left: Lorraine Gonzalez, Children’s Defense Fund of NY, Kevin Keogh, Small Business Majority, Jennifer Torres, New York Immigration Coalition, Becca Talzek, Make the Road NY, Heidi Siegfried, New Yorkers for Accessible Health Coverage, Jasmine Burnett, Raising Women’s Voices.

HCFANY held a short briefing this morning for coalition members and allies in the NYC area. For those of you who were not able to make it to HCFANY’s NYC briefing this morning, here is just a short recap of the events.

The first session focused on a recap of the 2011 legislative session, presented by Elisabeth Benjamin of the Community Service Society.  Lisa Sbrana, a policy analyst with the NYS Department of Health was our special guest for the day.  She gave a pretty thorough overview of where NY is in the health reform implementation process and talked about the new health insurance exchange bill in the budget, which is essentially very close to last year’s exchange bill.

She also updated us on the progress the state has made on the different studies the State has promised to do.  For example, the Urban Institute’s report on the Basic Health Plan provision of the ACA is due out next week.  Another report on how New York will pay for the exchange after 2015 is set to be released by Wakely Consulting later his quarter.

Lisa also directed us to the Enroll UX 2014 website, at www.ux2014.org , which is a design initiative that NY is participating in with 10 other states, the federal government, and several state health care foundations to hash out the basic enrollment interface that consumers will use on many of the forthcoming health insurance exchanges.  Many states (including New York) will be able to use this as a template to customize as they implement their own exchanges.

The second session included a presentation from Lois Uttley of Raising Women’s Voices, on how to talk about health care reform in 2012.  This was based on data pulled together by Lake Research Partners.

Lastly, a panel of HCFANY steering committee members went over HCFANY’s policy objectives for 2012, and who our key constituencies will be.

Overall, we walked away with a lot of new information on where New York is now in terms of health reform implementation, and what to expect in the coming months.  What a fine way to spend the morning!