Expensive Governor Hochul,
Firstly of 2024, you rightly declared the dire want to deal with a maternal and toddler mortality disaster within the State of New York. Whereas now we have taken steps to assault this disaster, we should make sure that pregnant girls and new moms can afford to take mandatory day without work and take care of themselves and their youngsters within the course of. To do that, we should present fairness in paid depart.
As you identified, for the primary time in twenty years, maternal and toddler mortality is on the rise in New York. Knowledge from the CDC reveals that from 2018 to 2021, maternal deaths elevated 33% in New York, the state comptroller’s workplace stated in a current report. The U.S. is the least protected rich nation to have a child, and New York ranks twenty third within the nation in toddler mortality, in response to the state Division of Well being. In a state the place the maternal mortality price for Black girls is greater than 4 occasions the speed of white girls, the rise, and the inequity, are merely unacceptable. That is much more unacceptable once we hear from the Well being Division that 78% of those deaths have been avoidable.
We’re grateful that you just’ve taken on this disaster. Final month, you signed into regulation a invoice that expands the knowledge supplied to expectant sufferers about maternal healthcare amenities and one other invoice that gives Medicaid protection for maternal telemedicine procedures. In January, the paid prenatal depart coverage that we included in final 12 months’s finances will go into impact, offering 20 hours of paid depart for prenatal care along with present sick depart.
These steps ought to all be applauded, however we nonetheless have a spot in our social security web that we should mend with a purpose to really confront this disaster.
At the moment in New York, a mom who’s recovering bodily from childbirth, which about 32% of the time features a surgical C-section, will get paid a most good thing about $170 every week. In the meantime, a accomplice staying at house to take care of the mom or bond with the brand new little one will get paid as much as $1,177 per week by way of the Paid Household Go away program. In different phrases, the one that is sick will get simply 10% of the advantages of the one that is caring for them. That should change. Brief-term medical advantages that present assist to New Yorkers who’re sick or have been damage off-the-job have been caught beneath a cap of $170 per week since 1989, and the time to behave is now.
Nobody on this state can afford to stay on $170 per week. Because of this frozen cap, 1000’s of girls annually are pushing themselves to work to allow them to keep housed and put meals on the desk when their docs are telling them they need to keep house and relaxation.
We all know that you just’re properly conscious of the circumstance as final 12 months you launched in your Government Price range a proposal that may align the short-term medical profit with these supplied by way of paid household depart.
We agree that creating fairness between these two applications is the suitable strategy, and whereas it was not included within the remaining finances, we fought laborious to move the same measure in June. That proposal would have applied this enhance over 4 years, making a stability by offering time for companies and staff alike to organize for the change. We have been near passing it, however time merely ran out within the chaos of the ultimate hours of a busy legislative session.
We hope that you’ll decide up the place we left off and introduce the same proposal in your Government Price range as soon as once more. This is able to assist velocity us towards an answer, serving to to make sure that we’re doing all we are able to to deal with the maternal and toddler mortality disaster that you just so aptly declared. We look ahead to partnering with you on this.
Sincerely,
Senator Jessica Ramos and Meeting Member Michaelle Solages
