Lawmakers and unions criticized Gov. Andrew Cuomo for pushing ahead
with a plan to reduce Medicaid spending as part of the state budget due
Tuesday even as New York responds to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Several Democrats who control the state Senate as well as labor and
progressive groups warned that cuts to the program, which provides
health care to more than 6 million New Yorkers, would be devastating.
They urged Mr. Cuomo to accept federal money approved earlier this month
and to tax the wealthy rather than making cuts.
“It’s absolutely insulting and it’s just wrong,” State Sen. Julia
Salazar, a Democrat from Brooklyn, said of the Medicaid changes during a
Sunday press conference. She said they would hurt poor patients and
hospitals on the front lines of responding to the epidemic.
The Medicaid issue emerged as a late flashpoint in the budget after
the virus shut down large segments of the economy and state tax receipts
cratered. The Democratic governor’s budget office predicted state
revenues were somewhere between $9 billion and $15 billion below the $88
billion projected in February.
“The problem with the budget is the numbers,” Mr. Cuomo said Sunday. “I’m not going to pass or sign a phony budget.”
The governor said he didn’t support raising taxes. He proposed a $178
billion spending plan in January, but has acknowledged in recent days
that circumstances have changed to the point that it is basically moot. A
planned 3% increase in the amount of state aid to public schools is now
in doubt, he said.
However, Mr. Cuomo said he was forging ahead with a plan to reduce
spending in the state’s Medicaid program by $2.5 billion. The state
approached its new fiscal year with a $6.1 billion deficit, largely
driven by Medicaid cost overruns. Mr. Cuomo filled the gap mostly by
assuming higher revenues as well as $2.5 billion in savings from a
so-called Medicaid Redesign Team of industry stakeholders.
The team’s recommendations include decreasing the reimbursement rates
the state pays for hospitals and nursing homes, as well as changes
designed to slow the growth of a long-term-care program in which sick or
disabled New Yorkers hire assistants to help them at home.
State officials have looked to Washington for help with the budget,
but the governor said there were provisions in the second coronavirus
stimulus bill approved by Congress that would block the redesign team’s
proposals, as well as his plan to shift more Medicaid funding
responsibility back to New York City and the state’s other counties.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that second stimulus
bill would provide up to $6 billion a year in additional Medicaid
funding for New York. Mr. Cuomo blasted Mr. Schumer, a Democrat from
Brooklyn, for agreeing to the provision.
Mr. Cuomo and his budget director, Robert Mujica, said they believed
the federal aid might be closer to $4 billion and that they would rather
push ahead with the redesign team’s recommendations.
“It takes waste and fraud and inefficiency out of the system,” Mr.
Cuomo said. “I have no choice. Two-and-a-half billion per year recurring
is worth more than $6 billion one shot.”
New York Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat
from Yonkers, said in a television interview last week that she believed
the redesign team’s proposals were conceived before the coronavirus
pandemic and should be revisited. American Federation of Teachers
President Randi Weingarten, whose union includes members in New York,
said she was surprised by Mr. Cuomo’s position.
“Right now, what’s more important is to keep everybody afloat. It’s puzzling to me,” she said.
A third federal stimulus bill included $5.1 billion of direct aid to
New York to cover costs associated with the coronavirus. Mr. Cuomo again
said the measure left New York shortchanged because it did nothing to
alleviate the state’s vanishing revenues.
Given the uncertainty, Mr. Cuomo, Ms. Stewart-Cousins and Assembly
Speaker Carl Heastie, all said they were discussing budget language that
would give the governor the power to unilaterally cut state spending if
its receipts didn’t materialize.
https://www.marketscreener.com/news/New-York-Lawmakers-Clash-Over-Medicaid-as-Budget-Deadline-Nears–30275463/
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