faustmanlab.org, pubmed.org ristori+ bcg, uspto.gov inventor search faustman dl.
Cuomo must solve his Medicaid mess, not dump it on local governments, taxpayers
Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to dump Medicaid costs on Gotham and counties across the state to close a $6 billion budget gap. Mayor Bill de Blasio and others suggest hiking taxes instead. Both sides are wrong.
Don’t shift costs — cut them. Or find savings elsewhere.
De Blasio says Cuomo’s “fix” would spring a $1.1 billion hole in the city’s own budget. And other New York local governments simply can’t absorb new costs. The gov’s plan will either “bankrupt” localities or prompt officials “to take away health care from people who need it.”
The city, warned de Blasio, would have to shut 19 health clinics, pink-slip 1,300 doctors and nurses and scrap summer jobs for 70,000 teens.
Instead, he (yet again) pushed (state) tax hikes on the wealthy. Teachers unions are pushing that same solution, since they fear any other answer might wind up squeezing school budgets.
Yet New York already has the nation’s highest taxes. And spends more per Medicaid enrollee than any other state: 79 percent above the national average in 2016.
New York’s Medicaid bill for 2018, $75 billion, was more than three times Florida’s, though the Sunshine State has more people.
Cuomo himself created much of this mess: His $15-an-hour minimum wage will boost Medicaid costs by $1.5 billion this year alone. And he’s failed to curb long-term-care costs, which soared from $3.2 billion in 2011 to $5.5 billion in 2016.
He also OK’d hikes in Medicaid payments to hospitals and nursing homes — two months after a hospital trade group gave $1 million to the state Democratic Party. Then he shifted the 2019 shortfall into 2020 (he likes shifting costs!), doubling the hole.
If Cuomo and the Legislature can’t find sufficient actual savings within Medicaid, the state should find cuts elsewhere in the gov’s $178 billion budget. Stop trying to force local governments and taxpayers to make up for Albany’s recklessness.
No comments:
Post a Comment