Policy & Advocacy

CHCANYS supports policies and legislation at the federal, state, and local level that support community health centers and advance health equity for all New Yorkers. See below for CHCANYS’s ongoing legislative priorities and memos of support. For any questions, please reach out to Marie Mongeon, Vice President, Policy and Jane Ni, Assistant Director, Policy.

Allow Physician Assistants to Serve as PCPs for Medicaid Managed Care Plans S.2124 (Rivera)
Physician assistants are already recognized as primary care practitioners by Medicare and commercial insurers for the vital role they play in delivering comprehensive whole person health care services. This legislation would allow physician assistants to serve as primary care practitioners for Medicaid managed care plans.

Coverage for All New Yorkers A.3020A (Gonzalez-Rojas)/S.2237A (Rivera)
Every New Yorker should have access to the care they need to live a healthy life. This legislation would create a state-funded Essential Plan that would provide healthcare coverage for individuals who are currently excluded due to their immigration status. 

Interstate Medical Licensure Compact A.4860 (Palmesano)/S.2216 (O’Mara)
New York State is facing unprecedented levels of workforce shortages. Joining the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact would greatly ameliorate the healthcare provider shortage by streamlining the process to allow physicians to practice in New York. This legislation would allow New York to become a member of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact.

Automatic Enrollment and Recertification Simplification A.5980 (Paulin)/S.4622 (Rivera)
Navigating the healthcare systems can often be complex and burdensome for many people. This legislation would provide for automatic enrollment and simplify recertification for Medicaid eligible recipients in long-term care. Doing so will simplify a burdensome process for members and eliminate many delays and disruptions of care.

Good Cause Eviction A.4454 (Hunter)/S.305 (Salazar)
All New Yorkers deserve safe and stable housing, and providing access to stable housing is critical to improving health outcomes. This legislation would protect New Yorkers’ right to stay in their homes by granting every tenant in New York State baseline protections against unjust evictions and unreasonable rent increases.

Clean Slate Act A.1029A (Cruz)/S.211A (Myrie)
All New Yorkers deserve equal access to housing, employment, and education. However, there are 2.3M New Yorkers who are perpetually punished by their conviction records that deprive them of access to these basic opportunities despite having already served their sentences. This legislation will ensure that all New Yorkers have access to basic opportunities by automatically clearing a New Yorker’s conviction record once they become eligible.

Comprehensive Sexuality Education for All New Yorkers A.4604 (Gonzalez-Rojas)
Everyone deserves access to information and resources to make informed decisions about their health. This legislation would ensure that all young New Yorkers will have the information and resources needed to make healthy and informed decisions about their health and well-being by requiring all schools to provide age-appropriate K-12 comprehensive sexuality education.

Establish the Reproductive Freedom and Equity Program A.361A (Gonzalez-Rojas)/S.348B (Cleare)
Increasing and expanding access to reproductive healthcare is critical to advancing health equity. This legislation would establish the Reproductive Freedom and Equity program to ensure that all New Yorkers and people across the country will be able to access reproductive healthcare.

Licensing Dental Therapy A5373 Woerner/S.4428 (Fernandez)
Community health centers are experiencing dental workforce shortages and struggle to compete with private practices for the limited pool of dental providers. This legislation will allow NYS to license dental therapists and advanced dental therapists and to provide Medicaid reimbursement for dental therapy services.

Add Dentists to DANY S.4334 (Sepulveda)/A.1454 (Aubry)
Expanding the Doctors Across New York (DANY) program to include dentists will incentivize dentists to practice in underserved areas and thereby advance DANY’s goals of ensuring patients in underserved areas have more equitable access to dental services.

Working Families Tax Credit S.277A (Gounardes)/A.4022A (Hevesi)
Working family refundable tax credits are one important means of building family economic security and independence and pulling families and children out of poverty. This legislation will expand New York’s child tax credit, thereby increasing opportunities for New York’s children to thrive.

Protecting Access to Gender Affirming Care A.6046A Bronson/ S.2475A (Hoylman)
Access to gender affirming care is essential to the mental health and overall well-being of young people. This legislation will protect young people’s access to gender affirming care in New York.

Community Health Center Rate Reform A.7560 (Paulin)/S.6959 (Rivera)
Today, CHCs deliver a full spectrum of comprehensive primary care services, including addressing social needs such as housing, transportation, and food insecurity. These services were never envisioned when CHCs’ base rate was developed over 20 years ago. This legislation directs the Commissioner of Health to update community health center rates to reflect the new, expanded model of health and social care that is the hallmark of CHCs.

​​​​​​​Community Health Center Telehealth Payment Parity A.7316 (Paulin)/S.6733 (Rivera)
Telehealth is a critical access point to healthcare for many low-income and underserved communities and has become integral to the CHC care model, empowering patients to choose the visit type that best suits their needs on a given day or for a given condition. This legislation will ensure community health centers licensed under Article 28 of the public health law are fully reimbursed when conducting services via telehealth regardless of modality and patient or provider location.

Allow Dental Assistants and LPNs to Apply Fluoride Varnish A.7402 (People-Stokes)
Comprehensive health and well-being cannot be achieved without expanding access to oral health care. This bill will expand access to preventative dental services and help to alleviate New York’s dental workforce shortage.

Reform OMIG Audits A.6813 (Paulin)/S.5329A (Harckham)
Medicaid providers and consumers need greater transparency and protections related to audits performed by the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General (OMIG). This bill will ensure that OMIG can perform its essential functions while creating protections and procedures and that allows Medicaid service providers to continue delivering high-quality, life-saving services throughout New York.

CHCANYS’ mission is to champion community-centered primary care through leadership, advocacy, and support of community health centers so that every community has primary care that encompasses all aspects of patient health and well-being. To safeguard and sustain the ability of CHCs to provide quality affordable health care services, advocacy is paramount to ensuring that CHCs, patients, and communities across New York State have a voice in the process and critical decisions being made by policymakers.