New York Immigration Coalition Executive Director Chung-Wha Hong addressing members of ethnic media at the briefing. Ãâ Photo by Aleksandra Slabisz NEW YORK: The New York Immigration Coalition and New York Community Media Alliance jointly organized a press briefing on health care reform for the members of the ethnic and community media atNYIC's office. Attended by about 50 journalists representing different community media publications and television and radio channels, the press briefing was addressed by NYIC Executive Director Chung-Wha Hong, MarkHannay, Director, Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign; Jenny Rejeske, Health Advocacy Coordinator, NY Immigration Coalition; Ayaz Ahmad, Director South Asian Council for Social Services; LanaKhrapunskaya, Intake Coordinator and Case Worker, Shorefront YM-YWHA of Brighton-Manhattan Beach; Noilyn Abesamis-Mendoza, Manager of Health Policy, Coalition for Asian-American Children and Families and Theo Oshiro, Director of Health Advocacy, Make the Road NY. In her remarks, Chung-Wha Hong highlighted some of the concerns of the immigrant communities about the health care reform. She called for making immigrants part of the solution when fixing the country's broken health delivery system. She said legal immigrants who paid the same amount of taxes as the
Jenny Rejeske, Health Advocacy Coordinator, NY Immigration Coalition, addressing the press briefing which was attended by about 50 journalists representing different ethnic and community publications, television and radio channels. Ãâ Photo by Norman Eng The speakers gave details of Affordable Health Care for America Act, HR3962, the health care reform bill passed by the House of Representatives on November 7, and on the potential effects on Americans, particularly immigrants. Some highlighted the adverse impact of five-year bar on permanent residents to get Medicaid, saying it denies critical health coverage to 600,000 people across the nation. It may be pointed out that the House bill does not restore federal Medicaid eligibility for the recently arrived, lawful permanent residents. All the speakers are strong supporters of the health care reform initiative and demand that all legal |