Governor Hochul: “So, I'm proposing the first major expansion to New York's consumer protection laws in more than 40 years. That would make unfair and abusive practices illegal and give the Attorney General's office a path to punish predatory operators. And that's what we're doing. And it'll help deter the bad actors from using these practices that have cheated New Yorkers out of their hard-earned money and make sure it stays in their pockets.”
Hochul: “[U]ltimately, these proposals have one objective, to make New York safer, more affordable and more livable. And that will help New Yorkers be strong because when New Yorkers get knocked down, they get knocked down by illness, disability, unfair business practices, low wages, they need to know that their state, their Governor, their legislature, their Attorney General will have their back. And that's who we are as New Yorkers.”
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul unveiled a sweeping consumer protection and affordability agenda, the first plank of her 2024 State of the State. Governor Hochul announced proposals to amend New York’s consumer laws to strengthen consumer protections against unfair business practices; establish nation-leading regulations for the Buy Now Pay Later loan industry; advance the first major increase in paid medical leave benefits in more than three decades; implement the nation’s most wide-ranging proposal to eliminate co-pays for insulin on certain insurance plans; and propose legislation to combat medical debt. Governor Hochul announced these proposals just one day after New York's minimum wage increase took effect.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available here.
PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Happy 2024. Really proud to be here with so many distinguished leaders will introduce momentarily, but I'll give you a clue. One of them is our Attorney General who's joined us here today. So, I want to thank Tish James for being here and an important part of what we're talking about here today.
You know, I was thinking about when I wake up in the morning, woke up in Albany, a home that was once occupied by Franklin Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt, so I have all their images, their statues, their busts. And I thought about, again, what Teddy said, and the credit belongs to the man, and I've adjusted to the woman, who's actually in the arena, whose face is marred by the dust and the sweat and the blood. And as we get on to this New Year, we're jumping back into that arena, ready to carry on the work of the people.
So, I'm going to tell you that today we're going to begin the fight to make sure we can put money back in the pockets of New Yorkers. And making our state, once and for all, a more affordable place to live. And again, I mentioned our Attorney General, I want to thank her for her incredible leadership. Everything we're talking about here today, her office has a major role in implementation, and I want to thank her for that. I also want to recognize my Superintendent of Financial Services. Yes, Adrienne Harris has done an extraordinary job. Great leader.
Carolyn Coffey, the Director of Economic Justice Litigation for Mobilization of Justice. Thank you, Carolyn, for joining us. The Carolyn Fan Club has arrived, it's great. And Beth Finkel, the New York State Director of AARP, so thank you. Also, we have the Chair of The Committee on Corporations and Authorities Commissions, Leroy Comrie. And Alex Bores and Clarissa Rodriguez, the Chair of the Compensation Board, and many others.
But I wanted to just give you a little preview. I mean, everyone knows the State of the State is on the 9th. I've been thinking about this for a long time, of what 24 initiatives will all be about, but I wanted to give some previews of some of the initiatives that take a little more time to explain. I don't want them to get lost in a longer narrative, but I want you to know how important this is to me. This is a plan, and this is not everything today, but it is a plan to just really just improve the quality of life for New Yorkers and make this state fairer and just more affordable. And an important part of that pillar is going to be our consumer protection and affordability agenda, and that's what we're talking about here today.
We've made great progress. You know, what is affordability? It's more money in your pockets. And starting today, or yesterday, phasing in a historic increase in the minimum wage. That's going to add so much more money, and I've always been so offended by the concept that people can work 40 hours a week and still fall below the federal poverty line. And so, we're righting that wrong. And starting today in New York City and Westchester and Long Island, it is $16 an hour, $16. Across the rest of the state, it's $15.
And there's scheduled increases all the way until 2027. And given how high inflation was last year and how it just knocked people back, those who even saw an increase in their paycheck, it was sucked up at the grocery counter or the gas pump. And so, inflation was cruel. So, I said from now on, starting in a couple years, we're going to take the minimum wage rate to inflation. So, we don't have to always have a battle and debate and have to wait until we get it through. That's the way it can be automatically changed to inflation. So, when prices go up, your pay goes up as well. And that's been talked about for years. Great idea. No one can get it done, but we did, and I'm really proud of that.
What is a public service announcement? I'm going to tell you if your pay did not go up and you're a minimum wage worker, our Department of Labor is waiting for your call, and they'll make sure you get the money that you are owed. But we're not just raising the floor on wages, we're talking about affordability across the board, and let's just look back over the last two years. Putting people back to work, unemployment, when I first became Governor, was seven percent. That's a lot of people out of work, not bringing home that paycheck for their families. Today it's 4.3 percent and continuing to decline. And we're bringing in tens of thousands of good paying jobs, so people don't have to work at the minimum wage level, that they can get the education, the skills they need to step into great jobs and have the money to set aside to invest in their futures.
Also, affordability means paying less in taxes. We delivered property tax relief to over 2.5 million New Yorkers. And we look back over the last two years, if it's been all about putting more money in your pockets, today we're going to talk about keeping it there. And that starts with safeguarding people from predatory business practices used to bilk New Yorkers out of their hard-earned cash. Let me be clear: the vast majority of New York businesses are honest and fair. They provide essential goods and services, they enhance their communities. But in every sector, there are some rotten apples that spoil the whole bunch. And they can give industries a bad name, and they actually can hurt people in the process.
So, today we're putting those bad actors on notice. We're coming after you, you're done ripping New Yorkers off. We did not fight for better wages, better jobs, higher pay, to just watch unscrupulous companies make a buck off of misleading New Yorkers. Because if we didn't fight for New Yorkers, the swindlers would just get through all kinds of loopholes, like vultures descending on their prey. And I'm talking about everyone from student loan – those servicers who steer students to the high, they steer the borrowers to not what's best for the student, but somehow, they end up with the most expensive repayment option. That's going to end.
Debt collectors who manipulate retired seniors into giving up their protected income. They need us to step up here. And that's what we're talking about today. We're also putting a stop to exploitative tactics, and that is a cornerstone of our entire project here today.
But believe it or not, this is something that is rather shocking. There are only seven states in America where abusive and unfair business practices are not covered by the law. Guess who's one of the seven? Guess who's no longer going to be one of the seven? And that is the State of New York. Today we're setting out to change that.
So, I'm proposing the first major expansion to New York's consumer protection laws in more than 40 years. That would make unfair and abusive practices illegal and give the Attorney General's office a path to punish predatory operators. And that's what we're doing. And it'll help deter the bad actors from using these practices that have cheated New Yorkers out of their hard-earned money and make sure it stays in their pockets. Also directing the Department of Financial Services, again, led by our Superintendent Adrian Harris to put stronger regulatory guardrails around the buy now, pay later loan industry.
We know how that operates, and I want to thank our Superintendent for her work in that. But there's another area which is so debilitating for families, New Yorkers. Just as you shouldn't have to fend off bad actors, you shouldn't face financial ruin if you're faced with a chronic illness like diabetes. People pay hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses every year for medications and insulin just to keep them alive. Now last year we signed a number of laws to help with the rising cost of medication, including protecting consumers from price gouging on prescription drugs.
That's progress, we talked about that. This year we're proposing legislation to ban copays for insulin, just to ban them. This will be the most expansive, most expansive insulin cost sharing prohibition in the nation, and it'll give financial relief to over 1.6 million New Yorkers. I'm very proud of this one because every family we know, everybody knows someone who's been touched by diabetes. But insulin is hardly the only medical expense that can cripple you financially. Just missing work to get medical treatment can be enough to break the bank. And here's why. The maximum benefit for paid medical and disability leave has been capped at $170 a week for 35 years. That defies comprehension.
Does anybody think the cost of living has gone up over the last 35 years? I mean, the last time the cap was raised, my daughter was born and she's 35. That comes out to $4.25 a week for a 40-hour work week. Who can live on that? Who can live on that? And remember, we pay for this our entire lives. You're paying into this fund, the employees and their employers. But what's the point of it if it doesn't help you when you need it to be there for you? New Yorkers deserve better. And if you're supposed to be thinking that $170 a week is going to replace your income, it is not going to work. If you take time off for care you need, you're forced to go into your retirement that you've been saving, go into the kids’ savings for college – whatever you've been setting that aside for, all of a sudden, it's gone. You might even miss a mortgage payment, start getting behind on everything else. And also, pregnant New Yorkers are affected as well. More than one third of medical leave claims are for pregnancy related disabilities.
So, I'm proposing an amendment to our disability law to increase the maximum paid benefit over the next five years. And we're going to tie it to the statewide average weekly wage, just as we do for family leave. And that's going to be a dramatic increase. It'll be 67 percent of the weekly average for the State of New York. Which comes out to about $1,250 a week instead of $170. So, that's more than seven times greater.
So, that's what I'm talking about, that's what I'm talking about. That's how you take care of people, lifting them up when life throws them a curveball – strengthening the safety net for those who get sick or hurt unexpectedly so they can get better without sacrificing everything they've worked so hard for.
And another damaging byproduct of unplanned illness and injury, because it can happen to anyone, is medical debt. That's the last thing I want to talk about here today. Roughly 700,000 New Yorkers are in medical debt – illness, injury, the bills add up, and now they're in debt. And many people have to sometimes forego medical care because they know they just can't afford it. They live in pain or they owe hundreds of thousands of dollars they just can't pay back. And so that's another hard choice they make. Now we've already signed laws, just recently, scrubbing medical debt from credit reports. Beth was there, we did that. And banning providers from being able to garnish your wages. I mean, you realize, “I can't afford it,” so they're just going to take it, no more. But, we can do even more for New Yorkers. There are hospital assistance programs, help you pay that debt, but these programs often aren't enough.
People can't make the big payments, and all of a sudden, their debt spirals out of control. People even sometimes face lawsuits. Now they're being harassed for lawsuits for amounts of money that they're never going to be able to repay, and they never could afford in the first place. So, affordability agenda, I'm proposing legislation that will protect low-income New Yorkers from being sued for medical debt while limiting the size of the monthly payments and the interest providers can charge.
We're also going to greatly expand those hospital financial assistance programs because more people need to take advantage of them.
So, these affordability actions represent the very first plank. Of our 2024 State of the State. Over the course of the next week, we'll be discussing another set of key issues facing New Yorkers: education, public health and much more. And ultimately, these proposals have one objective, to make New York safer, more affordable and more livable.
And that will help New Yorkers be strong because when New Yorkers get knocked down, they get knocked down by illness, disability, unfair business practices, low wages, they need to know that their state, their Governor, their legislature, their Attorney General will have their back. And that's who we are as New Yorkers.
And with that, I want to introduce another great champion for protecting consumer rights, our Attorney General, Tish James.