It's the Brian Laird Show. I'm producer Amina Serna filling in for Brian today. Let's talk now about another

sticking point in the New York state budget negotiations. On April 1st, some

450,000 New Yorkers were sent notices that they would no longer be eligible for zero

premium health insurance coverage through the state program called the Essential Plan.

That will start July 1st. This was brought on by what's called the One Big Beautiful Act, or HR1 passed by Congress

last summer.

There are proposals for mitigating these changes as part of the state budget, but no agreement

on that yet.

To talk about what federal bill changed and how the state is responding,

were joined by my colleague Caroline Lewis,

healthcare reporter for WMYC and Gothamist,

and by Elizabeth Benjamin,

vice president of health initiatives

at the Community Service Society

and co-founder of the Health Care for All New York campaign,

who issued a final report offering some options for

expanded eligibility and helped craft one of the proposals under consideration in the legislature.

Welcome back to the show, Caroline Lewis and Elizabeth Benjamin.

Awesome. Thanks for having us.

All right. Let's start with who's currently eligible for the

essential plan. Elizabeth, you want to take that one? Sure. The essential plan covers all

immigrants who are ineligible for federal Medicaid funding and advanced premium tax credit funding,

...