Our city and state went through an incredibly difficult period in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic demonstrated that enabling affordable access to healthcare is paramount to supporting New Yorkers and expanding healthcare access to underserved populations. Additionally, with reproductive rights under threat nationwide, we must make key family needs such as reproductive health planning more accessible.

Council Member Julie Menin supports providing high-quality healthcare to city workers, their dependents and retirees. The current Administration has attempted to move retirees to medicare advantage healthcare plans which has been met with serious concerns including a smaller network of providers. New York City must maintain high-quality, premium-free health care that retirees were promised by the City.

Julie believes that the most effective way to continue providing quality care is to find the $600 million through the budget. Specifically, the funding could be allocated by utilizing her legislation that created the landmark Office of Healthcare Accountability. By utilizing federal hospital pricing regulations, this law revolutionized health care in New York City by bringing transparency to prices and empowering New Yorkers with the information they deserve to finally uncover the hidden costs and expose the price gouging that has plagued our health care system for far too long. A study by 32BJ estimated that this new office could save the City upwards of $2 billion per year by harnessing our purchasing power to drive down costs which will allow New York City to maintain spending $600 million dollars a year for traditional medicare for retirees. Through the Office of Healthcare Accountability, we can truly fund retirees current plans through the City’s annual budget process. Julie has been a strong advocate for our healthcare.

• Passed first City in the nation legislation to create an Office of Healthcare Accountability which could save New York City up to $2 billion dollars annually. This bill will rein in healthcare costs for hardworking New Yorkers by promoting healthcare-pricing transparency and utilize the city’s purchasing power to leverage a health system that works for all New Yorkers. Read Julie’s OpEd in the NY Daily News here - New York must save money by exposing true cost of health care.
  

• When the Office of Healthcare Accountability's inaugural report — designed to expose the exorbitant prices hospitals charge — had significant gaps, as the City's largest insurance provider has refused to share the data the City need, Julie wrote an Op-Ed sounding the alarm on industry interests at play and the need to remove any roadblocks to data transparency.
  

• Following this report and repeated lobbying by Julie Menin and a labor coalition including 32BJ and DC37, Anthem has now agreed to release previously redacted healthcare transparency data. This agreement, first reported by the New York Post, will finally allow New Yorkers to know what hospitals are charging for all medical procedures. By shedding light on this often opaque system, we can better manage healthcare expenses and ease the financial burden on both the City and its residents.
  

• In the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, Julie passed groundbreaking legislation mandating that the Department of Health provide reproductive health services.