The one-house budgets reflect a sharp disagreement between the Governor and the legislature on Medicaid spending. The executive budget proposes sharp cuts to several areas of Medicaid spending — most notably home care worker wages — and provides only limited support for financially distressed hospitals.
The legislative one-house budgets come out firmly for higher Medicaid spending, restoring most of the governor’s cuts and offering significant rate increases. But how will they pay for it? The Senate and Assembly budget memos propose to raise $4 billion a year through an obscure mechanism: A tax on Medicaid managed care plans, the private insurance companies which administer most of the state’s Medicaid program.
New York State has been reported to be one of the states most at risk of incurring a shortage of healthcare workers over the next decade. With a quickly growing population of adults over the age of 65 (“older adults”) and a movement towards “aging in place,” the demand for home care workers will rise dramatically over the next decade.
Download the full report: "Domestic Workers Are Essential Workers: By the Numbers in New York" Throughout the coronavirus crisis domestic workers have been placed under a double pressure. Already underpaid, many have lost their jobs, or lost hours on the job, putting them under added financial stress. Even when on the job, however, domestic workers find themselves under added physical and psychological stress, acting as essential workers during a pandemic at some risk to their own health as they protect the health of others. Domestic [...]
October 14, 2020 Many of New York’s “essential workers,” people working in jobs deemed necessary throughout the COVID pandemic, rely on Medicaid for their own health care. They risk severe hardship if federal policymakers fail to provide appropriate increases in Medicaid funding or weaken protections for program enrollees, according to a new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In New York State over half a million, 554,000, essential workers rely on Medicaid. The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic led to a [...]
Strengthening Medicaid and protecting health coverage for New Yorkers is critical to ensuring that our state can respond effectively to the coronavirus public health crisis and the current economic recession. The Urban Institute has projected that Medicaid caseloads could increase by as much as 1,204,000, or 22.5 percent, through FY 2021—an unprecedented spike. New York needs help to cover those who are newly unemployed and expected to enroll in Medicaid and offset extra Medicaid costs related to coronavirus. Without proper funding, the state will be [...]
May 20, 2020 This time last year, New York celebrated its lowest rate of residents without health insurance to date at 5 percent. A historic low that is a continuation of nearly a decade of decline in people who lack health insurance, this record-breaking success set New York apart from the national trend of rising uninsured rates. The public health and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic threatens past success in reducing the rate of the uninsured in New York State. We must strengthen [...]
May 14, 2020 In the midst of a pandemic, there has been a growing call for undocumented immigrants, who make up five percent of the New York State labor force, to be covered by some form of unemployment insurance. What is often overlooked in discussions of unemployment insurance is the extent to which undocumented immigrants are already part of paying into the existing system, even when they are excluded from collecting benefits. Undocumented immigrants face the same challenges as other workers. It does not serve [...]
10/20/2017. Fiscal Policy Institutes Executive Director, Ron Deutsch, discusses how proposed federal budget cuts threaten healthcare. He and others rallied outside Glens Falls Hospital on Thursday to protest a possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare. “Congress has failed to renew funding for critical healthcare programs, which jeopardizes access to care for low- and middle-income residents and threatens hospitals across the state,” said Greenfield resident Ron Deutsch, Fiscal Policy Institute executive director." Access to full article Here
For Immediate Release August 24, 2017 Media Contact: Ron Deutsch, Executive Director, FPI 518-469-6769 Cassidy-Graham Bill Would Deeply Cut Health Coverage Funding for New York New York Faces Deepest Cuts of All States (Albany, NY)— A new Affordable Care Act (ACA) repeal bill would cut New York’s federal funding by $22 billion for health coverage by 2026, according to a new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities based in Washington DC. New York would be the hardest-hit state, with an eye-popping estimated [...]
For immediate release: April 20, 2017 Contact: Ron Deutsch, Executive Director, Fiscal Policy Institute 518-786-3156 (o), 518-469-6769 (c) Christy DeBoe Hicks, State Communications Specialist, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (202) 408-1080; cdhicks@cbpp.org Medicaid Supports New York’s Schools and Children House Republican Plans to Cut Medicaid Would Jeopardize Critical Health Services for Students [Albany, NY] – New York’s schools receive over $273 million from Medicaid each year, according to data released by the Washington, DC-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. This funding pays for [...]
February 3, 2016. In its 26th annual New York State budget briefing book, the Fiscal Policy Institute analyzes and comments on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s FY 2017 Executive Budget. The Executive Budget advances some bold and progressive proposals that well reflect the values and needs of New Yorkers. In particular, the governor has shown great leadership and vision in forcefully advocating for a first-in-the nation statewide $15 minimum wage. If enacted, the minimum wage increase would lift the incomes of 3.2 million New Yorkers who desperately [...]
December 14, 2014. A report completed by a research team of the Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative found a clear relationship between the density of shale well drilling activity and increases in crime, rents, traffic fatalities and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). These key “quality of life” issues had been identified in prior work by the Collaborative and in the work of others as having a potential relationship with intensive extractive industry “booms.” To examine this relationship, the Pennsylvania research team divided the counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, [...]
September 19, 2013. The percentage of New Yorkers without health insurance dropped for the second year in a row from 12.2 percent in 2011 to 11.3 percent in 2012 (+/- .5 percent) according to estimates released by the Census Bureau two days ago. Overall, the number of people without health care coverage across the state dropped to approximately 2.2 million people in 2012. Moreover, New York was one of only four states that had a statistically significant reduction in the share of people not covered [...]
June 13, 2013. Nurses and other health care workers have among the highest rates of on-the-job injuries in New York as a result of moving and lifting patients. This report considers what can be done to reduce patient handling injuries in New York. A number of hospital and nursing home facilities around the country have invested in patient handling equipment that significantly reduces the physical strain on health care practitioners. This equipment results in considerable cost savings in reduced lost work time, reduced turnover and lower workers compensation costs, and means that the [...]