Governor Kathy Clown's pay to Medicaid play scheme to remain in power

NY Post 

A couple with ties to a firm that’s been awarded hundreds of millions in Medicaid transportation contracts over the years has driven more than $300,000 combined into the campaign coffers of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and current Gov. Kathy Hochul, records reviewed by The Post reveal.

Critics say the donations are a textbook case of Albany’s pay-to-play culture that allows bidders and contractors to give massive campaign contributions to the governor whose agencies oversee them. By comparison, New York City law limits donations from bidders and contractors to the mayor and have business Big Apple agencies to $400.

The firm, Medical Answering Services, founded by president Russ Maxwell in 2004, was awarded eight contracts totaling $403.7 million by the state Health Department from 2011 through 2018. Four of the contracts don’t expire until next year.

Maxwell and his spouse, Morgan McDole, dropped $236,000 into Cuomo’s campaign coffers over those years.

The couple has also dumped more than $100,000 combined into the campaign coffers of Hochul, as governor and lieutenant governor under Cuomo — and the Hochul-controlled state Democratic Committee.

McDole, for instance, gave three contributions totaling $52,600 to Hochul over the past year — $22,600 on Jan. 8, 2021, $10,000 on Sept. 9, 2021 shortly after she became governor and $20,000 on April 24 of this year.

McDole donated another $20,000 to the Hochul-influenced state Democratic Party on April 27 of this year.

Meanwhile, Maxwell has donated $32,100 to Hochul since 2018 and $176,000 to Cuomo during his tenure. McDole donated another $60,000 to Cuomo.

“It’s a perfect example that shows how lax state campaign finance laws are,” said John Kaehny, director of the government watchdog group Reinvent Albany.

Predatory slumlord swindled city housing agencies for 8 years

QNS 

A Far Rockaway man was charged for defrauding government rental assistance programs by renting out dilapidated apartments he did not own to families in need, prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Paul Fishbein, 47, faces wire and mail fraud charges for allegedly falsely claiming to be the owner and landlord of 20 rental properties, mostly in the Bronx, while collecting government subsidies and evicting tenants over the course of eight years, according to the Southern District of New York.

“As alleged, Paul Fishbein not only took advantage of New Yorkers in need, he also defrauded city and federal government programs designed to help these very people,” U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said. “Fishbein allegedly lied about ownership of residential properties, fraudulently took rent subsidies and other benefits from those government housing programs, and often evicted tenants without cause from housing that was substandard in any event. Now Paul Fishbein is in custody and facing serious federal charges for his alleged fraud and exploitation.”

According to a complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court Tuesday, Fishbein allegedly lied about owning the properties beginning in 2013 based on forged deeds. He then allegedly rented the properties to homeless and low- to moderate-income families through rental assistance programs operated by three city agencies — NYCHA, the Human Resources Administration and Housing Preservation & Development — and collected money, including federal funds, as the purported owner and landlord of the properties.

The complaint estimates Fishbein defrauded the three city agencies out of about $1.5 million, including more than $270,000 in federal funds. In addition to taking payments, Fishbein allegedly faked using a broker to rent out the properties and kept certain broker’s fees for himself that the HRA issued as payment.

Fishbein is also accused of faking financial eligibility for Medicaid since at least 2014, the complaint says. He allegedly told the HRA he worked at a company where his total income was about $150 a week — or $600 a month — when he in actuality made hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Prosecutors allege Fishbein received nearly $50,000 in Medicaid benefits to which he was not entitled to as part of his scheme.

Cuomo's biggest and ugliest budget bill passes giving him more executive powers, more austerity cuts to Medicaid and stifles third parties from getting on the ballots

 

NY Post

Lawmakers granted final approval on Thursday to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s sprawling $177 billion budget for 2021.

The deal ended a months-long budget fight in Albany that went haywire in recent weeks as the coronavirus pandemic swept across the state — killing more than 2,300 and crippling the economy.

The document promises to touch on many facets of life in the Empire State such as: tightening eligibility for a key health care program for the poor, legalizing e-bikes popular with delivery workers, banning flavored e-cigarette products and tweaking the bail reforms rammed through in the last budget.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins (D-Westchester) addressed the state Capitol’s upper chamber, which was abandoned due to COVID-19 fears.

“As I look around this chamber, this nearly empty chamber, it really is surreal. For me, it’s chilling in many ways, it’s upsetting,” Cousins said.

“This is not a normal budget. It’s not even the budget we envisioned a month ago.”
Cousins’ Senate easily approved the final budget bills Thursday and the Assembly followed suit, though debate stretched into early Friday morning despite little doubt in the eventual outcome.

The budget foresees tax revenues plunging by at least $10 billion and OKed up to $11 billion in short-term borrowing to cover shortfalls while New York officials pray the feds provide more aid.

The budget crunch means that an expected $826 million boost in public education spending won’t happen — $321 million was supposed to go to the city’s schools.

New York City dodged one bullet as Cuomo abandoned plans to shift as much as $1.6 billion in Medicaid costs onto the Big Apple. Instead, Cuomo will take $200 million from the city and $50 million other counties for a “distressed” hospitals and nursing homes fund.

But other Medicaid changes outraged liberal lawmakers — especially the tightening eligibility rules for the state’s elderly and disabled to qualify for home care.

“Large numbers of frail elderly and people with disabilities will be deprived of home care by these restrictive standards,” said longtime Assemblyman Dick Gottfried (D-Manhattan) who chairs the chamber’s healthcare committee. “This is unjustified cruelty.”

NY Post
  
Gov. Cuomo managed to get his controversial overhaul of the state’s election laws and campaign-finance regulations included in the sprawling $177 billion budget, effectively ending a court fight that had tied the proposal up for months.

The overhaul will make it significantly harder for third parties to maintain their lines on the ballot, including Cuomo’s bête noire, the liberal Working Families Party.

All political parties will now have to score at least 130,000 votes in a statewide general election to remain on the ballot, more than double the current requirement of 50,000. It also imposes new limits on New York’s famously loose rules for fundraising.

In exchange, candidates will be eligible to receive public funding for their campaigns.

The overhaul was first proposed by a panel commissioned by lawmakers and Cuomo in the 2019 budget, which included Cuomo ally and state Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs.

The group issued their recommendations in November, which would have the force of law unless lawmakers vetoed them. However, the WFP and Conservative Party sued, claiming that Cuomo and lawmakers abrogated the proper legislative process, and won.

State made unnecessary Medicaid payouts

From Crain's:

Thanks to a lack of oversight, the state Health Department doled out $1.3 billion in six years in Medicaid premiums for people who were already enrolled in other comprehensive health plans, according to a new report from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The report found that the state Health Department is not quick enough to disenroll people when they sign up for coverage with another insurer. The overwhelming majority of those funds—about $1.2 billion—are not recoverable.

"Glitches in the state Department of Health's payment system and other problems led to over a billion dollars in unnecessary spending," DiNapoli said. "The department needs to improve its procedures and stop this waste of taxpayer money."

Avella pushing for tax cap

From the Daily News:

Not long ago, the city’s working- and middle-class homeowners gasped when they opened the mail to find new property tax assessments.

While the property tax rate in New York City hasn’t risen, our homeowners get slammed with exorbitant annual increases — many in my district in Queens saw hikes as high as $1,000 — because of a severely broken property-tax assessment system. These homeowners need relief to maintain a promise of affordability in New York City, which is why I support a 2% state property tax cap.

Our city can live under such a cap, just like every municipality, town and village in New York State has since 2011, where homeowners experience this respite from skyrocketing local levies.

Under the cap, increases in projected property taxes in localities are constrained. They can grow by only 2% or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower — unless the local council overrides the decision by a two-thirds vote.

As a result, not only do homeowners outside of the city enjoy lower tax bills, but by Fiscal Year 2020, they will have received $4.5 billion in additional state relief tied to the cap. Right now, city taxpayers don’t get a penny from those relief programs.

So extending the tax cap to New York City would help lift a burden both on families and on the city budget. For example, with a New York City cap in place, I would fully expect Gov. Cuomo to pick up the Medicaid growth that he’s proposed the city pay in this year’s budget; no county living under the property tax cap foots the bill for Medicaid growth.

There is something wrong when a mayor who preaches the gospel of affordability wants to balance the budget on the backs of working- and middle-class families.

The State Senate already voted for a 2% tax cap for New York City. I urge my colleagues in the Assembly to do the same to help struggling homeowners cope with costs, to keep New York affordable and to finally let 44% of New York taxpayers receive their fair share from the state.

City to try to move people out of illegal "3/4 homes"

From the NY Times:

New York City will dedicate $5 million of its budget for next year to inspect and fix illegal boarding homes, known as “three-quarter” houses, and to relocate tenants living in them, city officials said.

The spending is part of a budget deal for the 2016 fiscal year, which begins July 1, announced on Monday by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, who are both Democrats. It is the latest in a series of actions by the city after an article published by The New York Times last month on the flophouses, which are paid for with government money and cater to addicts and others with nowhere else to live.

Three-quarter homes, so described because they are seen as being between regulated halfway houses and actual homes, often cram four to eight people in a room and sometimes have blocked exits and squalid conditions. The article focused on one unscrupulous operator, Yury Baumblit, accused of taking illicit payments on Medicaid fees for drug treatment while forcing people to sleep in bunk beds squeezed into tiny rooms.

A day after the article was published, Mr. de Blasio formed an emergency task force to inspect the homes and try to fix the problem. The city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, a Democat, has also demanded that city agencies take steps to ensure that people in need of housing are not sent to three-quarter homes.

The task force has now inspected 63 three-quarter homes identified by the city’s Human Resources Administration, said Commissioner Steven Banks, a member of the task force. Nobody knows how many of the homes exist in the city because they are not legal and no registry exists. Officials have estimated that there are hundreds.

Mr. Banks said on Tuesday that the $5 million in next year’s budget will be used to pay for temporary housing for people who need to be moved and security for that housing; case-management services for people being moved; help connecting people to permanent housing; repairs to houses, such as removing bars from windows and unblocking exits; and “fire guards” — workers assigned around the clock to homes deemed to have fire hazards.

Nice going, NYC!

From the Village Voice:

Federal authorities say they've uncovered a long-running Medicaid scam that extracted millions in fraudulent gains, and was run by...New York City.
A civil fraud lawsuit announced on Monday alleges that the city, through its Medicaid biller, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), used a sophisticated scheme of computerized fraud to violate Medicaid reimbursement rules, leading to millions in illegitimate payments.

The allegations, made by Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, are complicated -- the city is accused of circumventing Medicaid rules in order to speed program payments for low-income children with developmental disabilities.

In order for Medicaid to cover such programs, the city first had to show that private insurers had already turned the claims away. The alleged scheme essentially made it look as if the city had submitted the payments for private reimbursement, when in fact it never had.

Among other aspects of the scheme, the vendor, CSC, allegedly programmed its computer systems to automatically insert a fake insurance policy number -- "999-999-999" -- with many of the claims submitted to Medicaid. The fake number ensured that every claim was immediately denied by private insurers, which got the Medicaid ball rolling much faster, expediting payments to the city.

There was no personal gain involved; the charging documents don't allege that anyone was, for example, pocketing these funds. They were going where they were ultimately supposed to -- to poor children who needed help.

Even so, Bharara, the federal government's chief law enforcement officer in the region, says the scheme was illegal. He's seeking "treble" damages from the city -- a fine of three times the sum of the ill-gotten gains -- but doesn't specify the amount fraudulently obtained, beyond saying that it was "millions" of dollars.

NY Senate bill would provide citizenship benefits to illegal aliens

From the NY Post:

Illegal aliens in New York could score billions in Medicaid and college tuition money — along with driver’s licenses, voting rights and even the ability to run for office — if Democrats win control of the state Senate in November, The Post has learned.

A little-known bill, dubbed “New York is Home,” would offer the most sweeping amnesty available anywhere in the country to nearly 3 million noncitizens living in the Empire State.

It would bar police from releasing any information about them to the feds, unless it involves a criminal warrant unrelated to their immigration status.

Under the proposed legislation, undocumented immigrants could also apply for professional licenses and serve on juries.

The plan hinges on Democrats — who now control both the governorship and the state Assembly — wresting control of the Senate from Republicans, who oppose immigration amnesty.

GOP officials maintain that amnesty for illegal aliens would open the door to fraud and abuse and increase the risk of terrorism.

For example, the bill would let illegals vote in local and state elections, but they would be barred by federal law from voting for presidential or congressional candidates.

"State citizenship" proposed for illegal aliens

From the Daily News:

Undocumented immigrants in New York could become “state citizens” with a slew of benefits from driver’s licenses to voting rights under a bill to be introduced Monday.

Advocates are set to announce the measure that would allow immigrants who aren’t U.S. citizens to become New York State citizens if they can prove they’ve lived and paid taxes in the state for three years and pledge to uphold New York laws — regardless of whether they’re in the country legally.

The state bill, which would apply to about 2.7 million New Yorkers, will face long odds in Albany, where even more modest immigration reforms have failed to pass.

People who secured state citizenship would be able to vote in state and local elections and run for state office. They could get a driver’s license, a professional license, Medicaid and other benefits controlled by the state. Immigrants would also be eligible for in-state tuition and financial aid.

HHC has gigantic budget gap

From Capital New York:

The city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation is facing a $430 million budget gap for fiscal year 2015, its president told the City Council’s health committee on Monday.

That gap is expected to triple to nearly $1.4 billion by 2018, said H.H.C. president Alan Aviles, who will soon be leaving the nation’s largest municipal hospital system.

The deficits can be attributed to damage from Hurricane Sandy as well as skyrocketing pension costs, but the most basic challenge is that H.H.C. treats hundreds of thousands of patients who can’t pay for the full costs of their care.

H.H.C. provides about $700 million in uncompensated care each year, and 80 percent of its patients are either on Medicaid or uninsured.

Obama as hospital savior? Maybe not

From the Daily News:

In a move expected to save three struggling Brooklyn hospitals, the Obama administration has finally agreed to let the state reinvest $8 billion in Medicaid savings into its health care system, Gov. Cuomo said Thursday.

Cuomo has repeatedly warned that without the approval, Brookdale Hospital, Interfaith Medical Center and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center would soon shut down.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Cuomo Thursday that the feds are ready to sign off on the request.

The $8 billion is $2 billion less than the state had sought, but it’s enough to help remake the health care system, Cuomo said.

However Crains has this to say:

Disregard the political rhetoric prior to this week's tentative approval by federal health officials of an $8 billion grant to overhaul New York state's health care system.

The so-called Medicaid waiver is not going to prevent every struggling Brooklyn hospital from closing, let alone any specific hospital. It won't keep New York City's public health system in the black.

And the waiver has nothing to do with New York's insurance exchange created under Obamacare, a connection that Gov. Andrew Cuomo publicly made as he pushed Washington to approve the cash infusion he had sought for 19 months.

For the average New Yorker, the $8 billion grant will actually chip away at the beloved hospitals so many community groups have battled to protect in recent years. The blunt reality of the new federal funding is that community hospitals throughout the city will lose beds. Many will be a sliver of their former selves, and newly anchored to big health care delivery systems. Access to more complex medical services will require travel to another neighborhood—or another borough.

In truth, what the $8 billion in federal money will fund can't be explained in a soundbite. That is because most of it will be funneled through the complex federal Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment program, or DSRIP, embedded in similar waivers that Washington approved for New Jersey, California and Texas. The program is meant to stabilize the health care safety-net system and to cut avoidable hospitalizations and emergency-department use by 25% over the next five years.

Million dollar Russian scammers immune from prosecution

From the Huffington Post:

Dozens of current or former Russian diplomats and their spouses enjoyed luxury vacations and spent tens of thousands of dollars on concert tickets, fine clothing and helicopter rides as they lied about their incomes to get the government to pay their health care bills with money meant for the poor, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

The diplomats were among 49 individuals charged in a complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan, though no arrests were made and only 11 of the diplomats and their spouses remained in the United States. The complaint said Medicaid, a health care program for the poor, lost about $1.5 million in the scheme since 2004.

"Diplomacy should be about extending hands, not picking pockets in the host country," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told a Manhattan news conference. He called it "shameful and systemic corruption."

Russian officials at the United Nations did not immediately comment.

The complaint alleges that the defendants submitted fraudulent applications for medical benefits for pregnancies, births and care for young children. Federal prosecutors said the diplomats qualified for Medicaid benefits by underreporting their income, often by tens of thousands of dollars.

Bharara said it was a case "we would be prosecuting and making arrests in, but for immunity." Still, he added, participation in crimes by diplomats generally leads to expulsion from a country.

Crowley takes credit for things she didn't do

Ooooh, I can't wait to hear this!

"When a house is sold in my neighborhood, I no longer worry about a developer tearing it down to build an oversized eyesore. Thanks to Elizabeth's rezoning, we will never have to worry about overdevelopment again."

Is this guy serious? First of all, the rezoning process for Maspeth-Middle Village-Glendale was started in 2004 by community volunteers, 3 years after Elizabeth Crowley initially ran for City Council, lost, and promptly disappeared. While civic groups were going door-to-door collecting building information, Elizabeth Crowley had a no-show job courtesy of Brian McLaughlin. She resurfaced only in 2008 to run for Council again. The ULURP for the rezone started a few months after Elizabeth assumed power in 2009, mainly because Amanda Burden insisted on personally touring the area before giving her seal of approval. Although the rezoning provides more protection from overdevelopment, there still is plenty of it around these neighborhoods. You'll still see 3 or 4-family houses being built in the future where there currently are one-family houses. And a lot of the area was not rezoned because City Planning couldn't decide which zone it fell into or felt the zoning already matched the housing stock.

Crowley doesn't send her kids to the Maspeth High School. And I guess she thinks we forgot that she voted against the construction of the school and that a lot of Maspeth moms can't send their kids to the school because Crowley failed to obtain the necessary concessions from the DOE. We didn't.

She's fighting for good schools, but the one she is at apparently has a teacher that can't spell the word "repercussion". Hmm. They must have known she was coming, however, because the words "fallacy" "manic" "recession" and "indict" appear next to her head on the blackboard.

This is the creepiest mailer of the bunch. A woman appears on the cover of the folded mailer. When you open it up...

Crowley appears next to her. (She apparently was photoshopped out of the cover.)

Crowley's office referred a constituent to a social worker who enrolled her in Medicaid. That's a basic function of a council member, not fodder for a mailer.

The Forum endorsed Crowley's opponent, Craig Caruana:

The 30th Council District is facing a laundry list of intimidating issues: A woeful lack of senior housing, overcrowded classrooms, an arts center that aims to serve liquor to thousands of patrons in a residential area inhabited by many older residents and families, and not enough green space.

There is much that needs to happen for the district’s residents, and in order for that to happen there must be an elected official who is not only responsive to constituents’ needs but able to get along with the City Council’s top brass, including the Speaker.

That person is Craig Caruana.

We know that Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley has done some good. She has put money into schools and parks. But she has not done nearly enough. Fairly or not, she couldn’t get along with Council Speaker Christine Quinn – and that has hurt the district financially. She is routinely missing in action when it comes to responding to constituent complaints, and, when asked if she would run for a third term – something she repeatedly slammed Mayor Bloomberg for pushing – she didn’t say no. Additionally, she is supporting the Knockdown Center, despite almost every other elected official and numerous civic groups in the area raising a litany of concerns about the facility’s request to serve alcohol to up to 5,000 people at the site.

We need someone who will listen to, and fight for, the people.

Craig Caruana grew up in Middle Village – he knows this district. An involved civic activist, he is committed to this neighborhood and will fight for his constituents – whether they are Democrats or Republicans.

It’s time to vote in someone who aims to reduce property taxes and bring more resources to area schools. Who will return phone calls and get along with other legislators. Who won’t say, with a wink, sure, I’d love for that to happen – and then never follow through.

Vote Craig Caruana Nov. 5.

For comparison, here are some of his mailers:

4 Brooklyn hospitals in danger of closing

From the Daily News:

Four Brooklyn hospitals are in danger of closing within a year unless the state gets help from the feds, Gov. Cuomo warned the Obama administration in a letter this week.

The state still hasn’t heard whether the feds will sign off on a waiver request from last August that would allow New York to use $10 billion of $17.5 billion in Medicaid savings it expects to achieve over the next five years to help restructure the state’s outdated health system for the poor.

Cuomo sent a letter this week to US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asking for quick action.

“Due to a rapid deterioration in the financial status of essential components of the health care services system in Brooklyn, if nothing is done within the next 12 months, the outcome will be disastrous,” he wrote.

Without the waiver, he said, at least four hospitals with nearly 1,000 inpatient beds and hundreds of thousands emergency room and ambulatory care visits will be in danger of closing.

Cuomo aides said the four are Long Island College Hospital, Interfaith Medical Center, Brookdale Medical Center, and SUNY Downstate/Brooklyn.

Adult day care centers feel like cruise ships

From the NY Times:

Scores of elderly Russian immigrants played bingo under the chandeliers of a former funeral parlor in Brooklyn on a recent Monday, with a free dinner and door-to-door transportation from anywhere in the city.

Zhang Di Hua, 69, playing table tennis at Centre Street Adult Day Care in Chinatown, which receives money for serving impaired or disabled Medicaid recipients.

Nearby, older people speaking Chinese filled a supermarket-size storefront with vigorous games of table tennis, billiards and mah-jongg, and ordered free lunch from a takeout menu featuring minced pork, beef and salty fish.

In Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, at the new R G Social Adult Day Care Center, known locally among elderly immigrants for luring clients with cash and grocery vouchers, most people there for lunch did not stay to eat. Instead, many walked briskly toward the subway carrying bags stuffed with takeout containers, and two elderly men rode away on bicycles with the free food.

Not a wheelchair or walker was in sight at these so-called social adult day care centers. Yet the cost of attendance was indirectly being paid by Medicaid, under Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s sweeping redesign of $2 billion in spending on long-term care meant for the impaired elderly and those with disabilities.

Such centers have mushroomed, from storefronts and basements to a new development in the Bronx that recently figured in a corruption scandal. With little regulation and less oversight, they grew in two years from eight tiny programs for people with dementia to at least 192 businesses across the city.

Managed care companies, financed by Medicaid, pay the centers to provide services to members. But the door swings both ways: Centers also refer new clients to the companies.

With the largest Medicaid budget in the country, $54 billion, New York is trying not only to rein in runaway spending, but also to “rebalance” it, away from costly institutional care, like nursing homes and medical models known for overbilling, to inexpensive supports that keep people safely in their communities.

In that context, Jason Helgerson, the state’s Medicaid chief, defended the rapid expansion of social-model adult day care, saying that without a chance to socialize and connect with others, Medicaid clients would suffer a decline in health that would add costs. But when a reporter described some of the practices observed at centers, he expressed surprise and anger.

Why is NY's Medicaid so damn expensive?

From the NY Post:

State Senate Republicans plan to investigate New York’s costliest-in-the-nation Medicaid system and echoed congressional calls for an independent audit of the $54 billion annual program.

The Senate GOP said it will particularly target accusations of “complacency and inaction” by the state Office of the Medicaid Inspector General under Gov. Cuomo.

The Republicans also said yesterday that New York’s Medicaid program generally needs more continual monitoring and evaluation from outside auditors.

A recent congressional report contended that New York overbilled the federal government by billions of dollars over 20 years.

NY's financial health in jeopardy

From the NY Times:

New York State faces long-term budget problems that are compounded by the teetering finances of its local governments, an aging infrastructure and the possibility of severe cuts in federal funding, a panel of fiscal experts said Tuesday.

The State Budget Crisis Task Force, a nonpartisan group, said that New York’s problems had been “papered over with gimmicks” for decades, and that while Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had taken some steps to rein in spending, the state was still saddled with burdens that would leave it unable to make ends meet in the long run. Over the past decade, the report said, New York had postponed a reckoning by using one-time measures to produce $25 billion in revenue.

Former Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch, a co-chairman of the group, said the math spoke for itself. “There are expenditures that are growing at a rate faster than revenues,” Mr. Ravitch said. “As long as that happens, then we are on an unsustainable course.”

A report released on Tuesday by the panel, which was also led by Paul A. Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, offered a sobering assessment of the state’s finances, raising concerns about its outsize spending on health care and education, its vulnerability to the ups and downs of Wall Street, and the struggles of its local governments to pay retirement obligations.

As one major area of concern, the report highlighted the state’s enormous Medicaid budget, which is larger than those of Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas combined. The report said that while the Cuomo administration had put in place a cap on annual increases in health care spending, it was not certain the measure would drive down costs over the long run.

NY to pay more for illegal alien heath care

From the NY Times:

President Obama’s health care law is putting new strains on some of the nation’s most hard-pressed hospitals, by cutting aid they use to pay for emergency care for illegal immigrants, which they have long been required to provide.

The federal government has been spending $20 billion annually to reimburse these hospitals — most in poor urban and rural areas — for treating more than their share of the uninsured, including illegal immigrants. The health care law will eventually cut that money in half, based on the premise that fewer people will lack insurance after the law takes effect.

But the estimated 11 million people now living illegally in the United States are not covered by the health care law. Its sponsors, seeking to sidestep the contentious debate over immigration, excluded them from the law’s benefits.

As a result, so-called safety-net hospitals said the cuts would deal a severe blow to their finances.

The hospitals are coming under this pressure because many of their uninsured patients are illegal immigrants, and because their large pools of uninsured or poorly insured patients are not expected to be reduced significantly under the Affordable Care Act, even as federal aid shrinks.

In some states, including New York, hospitals caring for illegal immigrants in life-threatening situations can seek payment case by case, from a program known as emergency Medicaid. But the program has many restrictions and will not make up for the cuts in the $20 billion pool, hospital executives said.

Don't you find it interesting that Bloomberg, Cuomo, Gillibrand and Schumer have not mentioned one word about NY City & State taxpayers being forced to shoulder the burden of paying for this?

How incompetent is this?

From CBS New York:

Hundreds of millions of dollars set aside to help fund city schools is simply sitting on the table unclaimed. School administrators say they don’t have the manpower to fill out the paperwork necessary to get it.

City school administrators are scrambling to explain why they haven’t bothered to claim more than $500 million they’re entitled to.

“This is sheer incompetence, it is disgusting and every parent in this city should be outraged,” Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said.

The Department of Education hasn’t filed Medicaid reimbursement claims for services like physical, occupational and speech therapy since 2006.

As a result, the department has missed out on more than $500 million that taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill for.

The DOE blames the state for the screw up, saying it ordered an overhaul of the process several years ago and from 2005 to 2010 while that was in the works, barred the city from filing these types of claims .

But, while the DOE is allowed to file now retroactively, Mayor Bloomberg doubts the DOE will be able to recoup any of the money.

Home care agencies make big bucks off state

From the NY Times:

Every day across New York State, thousands of part-time workers visit the homes of developmentally disabled people to teach them simple tasks, like grooming or how to take a bus.

For their work, which requires no special credentials, the employees typically earn $10 to $15 an hour.

But when the nonprofit organizations that employ those workers bill the state, they collect three and four times that amount — with some having received as much as $67 an hour.

Spending on this little-known home care program, called Community Habilitation, has soared in recent years, creating multimillion-dollar surpluses at some nonprofit agencies and eye-popping salaries and benefits for those who run them.

And it helps explain how New York’s costs of caring for developmentally disabled people have ballooned in recent years, creating the nation’s most generous system of Medicaid-financed programs, with little scrutiny of its efficiency or results.