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NYC Council meetings, chaptered and linked by time.

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Q&A

CM Restler on essential plan and Medicaid enrollment strategies

New York City Council · Jun 5, 2026 · starts 1:43:49 · 1 min 47 sec

Martin details the Board of Health resolution, the $500K enrollment campaign, and NYC Care as a safety net option. On Medicaid, he describes 26 new FTEs as a floor, with navigators, volunteers, and CBOs through Access Health building additional capacity.

Dr. Alistair Martin

Let's talk one at a time.

Dr. Alistair Martin

So first, with the essential plan, your data is exactly right.

Dr. Alistair Martin

230-Something thousand individuals are going to end up losing coverage.

Dr. Alistair Martin

So what do we do about it?

Dr. Alistair Martin

So first, we pulled the Board of Health together just about two weeks ago to pass a resolution that calls this what it is.

Dr. Alistair Martin

Number one, these are attacks on public health insurance by the federal government.

Dr. Alistair Martin

Number two, it commits us to creating a plan to address these coverage loss scenarios, and we immediately put money behind it.

Dr. Alistair Martin

We launched a campaign to help individuals who may lose their central plan,

Dr. Alistair Martin

help them enroll in other coverage options, including NYC Care, which is another type of coverage, as you know, safety net of the safety net type of coverage options.

Dr. Alistair Martin

But third, helping these individuals also recognize that they can always come to us.

Dr. Alistair Martin

We have 11 clinics across the city, and folks can come to us to get their care.

Dr. Alistair Martin

With regard to Medicaid, yeah, you know, so we have 40.

Dr. Alistair Martin

26 new FTEs that are going to be coming in to help us do this work.

Dr. Alistair Martin

That's the baseline.

Dr. Alistair Martin

That's sort of a floor.

Dr. Alistair Martin

On top of that, we can build in navigators and people who are looking for either volunteer work or looking to do workforce development.

Dr. Alistair Martin

And we can add many, many, many more layers on top of that.

Dr. Alistair Martin

And we have a huge community of community-based organizations as part of the Access Health program.

Dr. Alistair Martin

So the bottom line is this is us as a health department putting our hand up and saying we are committed to this fight.

Dr. Alistair Martin

We're going to work with other organizations.

Dr. Alistair Martin

We're going to work with other agencies.

Dr. Alistair Martin

And we're going to work to get this done on behalf of New Yorkers.