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Health Care

Community Health Access

CSS is at the forefront of providing community education and consumer assistance to New York City residents who must select and navigate health maintenance organizations (HMOs) as the required form of health care in our neighborhoods. The CSS Community Health Access Department is the recipient of significant state and city funding that, in turn, we award to dozens of community based organizations. CSS lawyers provide legal counsel to CSS and technical assistance to these organizations to ensure contract compliance with both state and city requirements.

Our work has made it possible to provide high quality community education programs to marginalized communities in multiple languages and to ensure that individuals who need assistance in accessing critical health care through their HMOs know where to turn.

The negotiation of contracts with funding sources such as the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and Maximus, Inc., the enrollment broker for the New York Medicaid Choice Program, as well as with our subcontractor community organizations; contract compliance monitoring; and contract interpretation are among the tasks that the Department of Legal Counsel engages in to ensure that CSS is providing assistance to those in need of health care in the city.

State Children's Health Insurance Program

CSS partnered with the Empire Justice Center, the National Health Law Program, and the Center for Medicare Advocacy to file a federal lawsuit, Miles v. Leavitt (2008), challenging the Bush Administration's use of the unpublished rules to reject New York State's proposed plan to provide discounted health insurance to children in moderate-income families through the State's Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). If adopted, the State's plan would have offered discounted health insurance to an additional 70,000 uninsured New York children.

This is the first case that seeks to represent actual children affected by the new federal rules. New York, Maryland, Illinois and Washington filed a group lawsuit against the federal government on October 4, 2007 and New Jersey filed a separate case on October 1, 2007.