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New York City Voices crew, me, Milly, and Manoj, caught the AMTRAK train at 6:15 AM from Penn Station and arrived in Albany near nine o'clock. We went to the Empire State Plaza for the Mental Health Association of New York State's (MHANYS) Annual Legislative Conference. Among the morning speakers were state Comptroller H. Carl McCall, state Mental Health Commissioner James Stone and two assemblymen, Martin Luster, chair of the mental health committee and John Faso, Minority Leader. Our own Albany Advocate columnist and MHANYS' President/CEO Joe Glazer did a fabulous job moderating.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon in the offices of some of our assembly representatives lobbying. Assembly members need to meet people with mental illness to get to know what kinds of people their legislation is affecting. Our agenda with these representatives was:

get them to support Medicaid Buy-in and
support insurance parity for mental health and chemical dependency and
get them to support a living wage for community mental health workers.
While New York State currently allows certain SSI recipients with disabilities to earn up to $29,736 per year and retain Medicaid benefits (the "1619" program), the state has the option to offer a Medicaid buy-in with a "sliding scale premium" for individuals earning between 250 and 450% of poverty level.
Mental health consumers, including those in need of chemical dependency services have traditionally been discriminated against in health benefit coverage. If mental health insurance coverage were equal to physical health insurance coverage then people in the workforce with private insurance could more easily obtain necessary mental health or chemical dependency services for themselves or their families.

Mental health workers in the not-for-profit sector continue to be paid at or near the poverty level. This cannot continue while their governmental colleagues earn up to 40% more for the same work.