Helping New Yorkers Cut Through Red Tape With Civic Helpers

July 17, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In 2024, a New Yorker was charged a $25 copay for a cancer screening that state law explicitly says should be free. The amount was too small to fight, but the problem was not. That single copay led former Assemblyman David Buckwald and his new nonprofit, Civic Helpers, to the American Medical Association, where they successfully pushed for an update to the national medical billing codes used across the country. The change now prevents copays from being charged for a range of cancer screenings in dozens of states. This is the model: take one broken interaction between a person and a bureaucracy, fix it, and in doing so, fix it for everyone else who would have hit the same wall.

The Problem: Systems That Wear People Down

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What you'll learn

1 (01:34) **How Civic Helpers Was Born** - David Buckwald explains the origin of the nonprofit as a natural extension of his lifelong drive to solve problems, and how a Westchester County startup course helped crystallize the mission.
2 (05:10) **How Cases Are Chosen** - The process for deciding which issues Civic Helpers takes on, from word-of-mouth referrals to proactive problem-spotting.
3 (06:55) **Proactive Problem-Solving** - The organization doesn't just wait for clients; they actively look for broken systems and alert the right people.
4 (08:57) **Persistence vs. Bureaucratic Exhaustion** - David describes the strategy of wearing down the bureaucracy through sheer persistence, a key differentiator from individuals who give up.
5 (12:23) **The Long Game on Important Issues** - The organization is willing to pursue cases that take a year or more to solve, driven by impact rather than profit.
6 (14:01) **Case Study: Cancer Screening Copays** - A detailed walkthrough of a major win: fixing a national billing code that was preventing free cancer screenings.
7 (17:36) **Case Study: Unpaid Government Grants** - A common problem for nonprofits: grants that are awarded but never paid out.

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Show Notes

Former Assemblyman David Buchwald joins us to discuss Civic Helpers, the nonprofit he founded to help people and organizations navigate government bureaucracy. Buchwald, who served as a White Plains councilman before becoming a state assemblyman, explains how the organization has helped resolve health insurance problems, recover money in delayed government grants for nonprofits, and identify systemic issues affecting New Yorkers.