12
COURIER LIFE, APRIL 15-21, 2022
Brannan sets sights on
free eye care for lowincome
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
New Yorkers
The city’s budget process is ramping
up ahead of a July 1 deadline, and Brooklyn
Councilmember Justin Brannan is
asking the city to fund a program for free
eye care for low-income New Yorkers.
Brannan is proposing a year-long, $1.4
million pilot program for an optometry
bus operated by the city’s Department of
Health. For 365 days, the mobile clinic
would drive around the city offering free
eye exams and glasses for New Yorkers
earning less than 250 percent of the federal
poverty level, the Daily News first reported.
“Especially for low-income families,
you’ve seen the research on adults and
kids who struggle with unchecked vision
issues and the substantial impact that it
has on their lives,” Brannan told Brooklyn
Paper. “This isn’t something that we
can take for granted.”
The councilmember, who represents
Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst,
and Bath Beach, was diagnosed in 2016
with keratoconus, a rare eye condition
affecting the cornea. In the seven years
since, he has lost nearly all vision in his
left eye, and is headed in for a cornea
transplant later this week.
A long journey to diagnosis, treatment,
and finally, surgery, the closest doctors
can offer to cure keratoconus, has
reminded Brannan of his good fortune
to have comprehensive eye insurance, he
said, something many New Yorkers have
to do without.
In 2020, 7.2 percent of Brooklynites and
7.9 percent of New York City residents under
age 65 were uninsured, according to
census data. But dental and eye care are
usually not covered by medical insurance,
so preventive care and treatment can be
prohibitively expensive.
Even though specialist ophthalmological
care is usually covered by medical
insurance, a visit to the regular old eye
doctor is usually the first step. After he realized
he was losing vision in his left eye,
Brannan visited two different eye doctors
before he was diagnosed at Verrazano Vision
and referred to a specialist, he said.
Under federal guidelines, a family of
four making up to about $70,000 per year
would be eligible to take part in the pilot
program. The measure was included in
the Council’s response to Mayor Eric Adams’
preliminary budget proposal for the
upcoming fiscal year, which includes the
list of the body’s monetary priorities, said
Brannan, who heads the Council’s Committee
on Finance.
Late last month, Brannan introduced a
Councilmember Justin Brannan is hoping to
bring free eye exams and glasses to low-income
New Yorkers as part of the city’s budget.
William Alatriste/NYC Council
bill that would require the health department
to create a similar program, backed
by his fellow Brooklyn electeds Shahana
Hanif, Kalman Yeger, and Lincoln Restler.
He penned a similar piece of legislation
back in 2019, but it was lost in the shuffle
of a busy legislative year for the city.
“We turned the legislation into a pilot
program … if we’re able to get that funded
in the budget, then we wouldn’t need the
legislation,” he said.
Now that the Council has submitted
their response, Adams will release an
updated Executive Budget, which will be
analyzed in Council hearings before the
mayor’s office and the Council enter negotiations
in late spring and early summer.
The budget must be finalized on or before
July 1, the first day of the next fiscal year.
Even if the pilot is successfully included
in the city’s budget, Brannan still
wants to pursue the legislative option to
make sure it’s not just a one-and-done.
It’s too early in the budget process to
know whether or not the program will end
up in the final budget, Brannan said, and it
will need to be developed further no matter
what.
In the meantime, as federal lawmakers
continue to work on passing Universal
Healthcare, city and state officials still
have a role to play in making healthcare of
all kinds more accessible, Brannan added.
“We’re trying to find our lane where
we do have the jurisdiction to provide services
for folks who can’t afford it,” he said.
“Universal healthcare is the holy grail,
but we keep sort of pushing at it wherever
we can. This was a place where we were
like, ‘We could do it ourselves.’”
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