Albany lawmakers are rejecting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s efforts to rein in the popular $6 billion Medicaid home health program, which critics say is highly susceptible to abuse.
After announcing their own budget last week, lawmakers are on the offensive, with the governor’s planned reforms to the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) aimed at helping seniors who rely on the program as an affordable option. They claim that it is an attack on people with disabilities. Receive home care.
Jeri Mariano, 56, a recipient of the program, said, “Given the governor’s proposed drastic budget cuts to home health care, especially consumer-driven personal assistant programs, it’s a deadly and abusive process.” I’m worried about being forced into an institution,” he said at a recent meeting. The press conference was organized by the powerful medical union 1199 SEIU.
“Honest to God, I don’t know why Governor Hochul hates me and everyone else who wants to stay in our homes with these programs,” Mariano continued.
The program allows relatives, friends and other close acquaintances of disabled and elderly people below a certain income level to receive compensation of more than $43,000 annually as a caregiver.
Funds for caregivers flow through financial intermediaries, which pay caregivers and get reimbursed through state and federal Medicaid dollars, but they take a small cut.
Critics of the program say it lacks sufficient oversight and structural checks and balances to prevent fraud and abuse.
A 2020 FBI bust alleges that the Brooklyn-based agency manipulated CDPAP customers’ work hours, defrauding them of millions of dollars in state and federal Medicaid in the process.
Investigators discovered that some of the aides were actually billed for hours while on cruises or drinking wine at a New Jersey vineyard.
As part of his $233 billion national budget proposal, Hochul is calling for several new reforms to CDPAP. These include limiting the number of hours a caregiver can work per week and giving the state Department of Health broad authority to regulate how financial intermediaries within the system operate.
Hochul estimates that these regulatory changes could save the state $100 million a year.
Hochul also wants to eliminate the $1.55 per hour increase to the minimum wage for CDPAP assistants in New York City and Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties. The Governor’s Budget Office estimates that the cuts will save the state about $100 million a year.
The governor has made Medicaid spending, the second-largest item in the state’s discretionary budget after school funding, a major priority.
New Yorker taxpayers are expected to: spend over $30 billion About the Medicaid program in the 2025 budget.
“The cost of this program has skyrocketed by 1,200% in just eight years, threatening our ability to pay for other critical health services and balance our budget,” a Hochul spokesperson told the Post. Told.
“Common sense reforms are needed to protect New Yorkers who rely on home health care and protect taxpayer dollars.”
Lawmakers who attended the 199SEIU Healthcare Workers Union press conference in Yonkers on Friday questioned the governor’s claims about fraud within the program.
“To me, I haven’t seen the evidence,” state Sen. Shelley Mayer (D-White Plains) told the Post.
Mayer added: “As long as there are concrete, identifiable, evidence-based examples that require policy modifications, the door is of course open.”
Meyer also flatly rejects the idea of eliminating the $1.55 pay increase for CDPAP assistants in New York state’s most expensive counties.
About 250,000 New Yorkers were on CDPAP as of last year, an increase of more than 78% from 140,000 in 2015, according to Department of Health data. The program has exploded in popularity, with agencies running subway ads, TV commercials, and even enlisting TikTok influencers to spread the word about the program. This is clear from the fact that the company is trying to hire nursing care workers.
“This is one of those things that’s been talked about, people on TikTok saying, ‘Please take care of your grandma and get paid,'” said Rep. Mary Jane Simski (D-Tarrytown). .
“You know what? First of all, the people who care for grandma should make money. And second of all, this is a good public policy option,” she said, adding that elderly and disabled people in nursing homes should He pointed out that the cost of long-term care is much higher.
199SEIU, one of the most politically influential labor unions in the state, is already working to block Hochul’s Medicaid reform efforts.
1199SEIU and its close affiliate, the Greater New York Hospital Association. new advertising campaign He criticized Hochul earlier this year for proposing Medicaid reform.
A recent report in the Post found that state taxpayers spent $49 million to bail out the state’s bankrupt 1199SEIU health insurance fund for home care workers.
1199SEIU United Health Care Workers East said in a statement to the Post, “The Legislature is right to reject the governor’s dangerous cuts to worker wages and consumer hours in the Consumer Individual Assistance Program. ” he said.
