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Protecting access to quality, affordable health care
The governor’s budget would have cut a hole in our
families’ health care safety net. The Assembly fought
for a budget that ensures quality health care while protecting
taxpayers by:
reducing the governor’s sick tax on nursing
homes and cutting his tax on hospitals in half creating a Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st
Century to determine the best way to protect services by eliminating
costly excess capacity in the state’s health care
facilities creating a preferred drug list with the strongest consumer
protections in the nation that ensures physicians have the final say
in prescribing medicine scaling back the out-of-pocket expenses that the governor
sought to impose on Family Health Plus enrollees through significantly
higher co-pays, as well as his attempts to cut basic benefits like vision,
dental and hospice care
Easing the burden on New York City taxpayers
The budget includes a soft cap on the growth of local Medicaid costs,
which is estimated to save the city $523.6 million in the coming
year - vital funding that should be reinvested in the city’s
schools.
Improving New Yorkers’ commute
The Rebuild and Renew New York Transportation Bond Act is part of
the budget. If voters approve the bond act this November, $2.9
billion will be available to preserve, renew and improve the
state’s transportation infrastructure, including:
- The 2nd Avenue subway
- Lower Manhattan - JFK train
- East Side access
- Roads and bridges
Helping working families keep more of their hard-earned money
The budget rejects the governor’s speeded up tax break for
those earning over $500,000 a year to ensure the wealthiest New
Yorkers contribute their fair share, and gives working families a
break by:
providing two weeks free of sales tax on clothing under $110
and a permanent return of that sales tax exemption effective April 1,
2007, unless the governor proposes a tax cut sooner, in which case the
exemption starts next April 1 rejecting the governor’s proposed SUNY and CUNY
tuition hikes, a 50 percent cut to the Tuition Assistance
Program (TAP), and his cuts in opportunity programs creating memorial scholarships for the families of American
Airlines flight 587 that crashed in Belle Harbor, New York on
November 12, 2001
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