{"id":920,"date":"2014-02-03T12:50:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T17:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/?p=920"},"modified":"2015-05-12T06:46:06","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T10:46:06","slug":"governor-cuomos-health-care-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/governor-cuomos-health-care-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Governor Cuomo\u2019s Health Care Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listen: wamc.org\/post\/blair<\/strong>–horner<\/strong>-governor-cuomos-budget-health-care<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the state\u2019s most important public priorities is ensuring that New Yorkers have access to affordable and high quality medical care as well as providing health services to those who are poor or needy.\u00a0 Tens of billions of dollars are spent to meet those demands and this week the governor\u2019s health budget proposal was the subject of a legislative public hearing.<\/p>\n

Two key issues under consideration are the implementation of the federal health care reform act and the state\u2019s public health programs.<\/p>\n

The number of New Yorkers who lack health insurance is considerable.\u00a0 According to the US Census Bureau, in 2012 roughly 2.1 million New York residents were uninsured (11.3 percent of the population). While this percentage represents a lot of New Yorkers, it is both the lowest percentage and the lowest number of New Yorkers who lack health insurance since 1999.<\/p>\n

What has happened to drive down the number of uninsured?\u00a0 The drop in the percentage of the uninsured has followed the timeline of the implementation of the federal health care law.\u00a0 Starting in the Fall of 2010, coverage under the law started to kick in.\u00a0 It seems reasonable to conclude that the changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) contributed to New York\u2019s decline.<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s budget calls for continued funding of New York\u2019s implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act, given the state\u2019s significant reduction in the percentage of New York\u2019s uninsured, is worth supporting.<\/p>\n

Regarding the state\u2019s public health programs, the governor has once again proposed dramatic \u2013 and possibly harmful \u2013 changes.<\/p>\n

Last year the governor\u2019s budget called for the consolidation of 89 public health programs coupled with a cut in funding of 10 percent.\u00a0 Thankfully, both houses rejected the governor\u2019s plan in their one house budget bills.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the governor\u2019s insistence on cuts to those vital programs resulted in a 5.5 percent reduction in funding.<\/p>\n

This year, the governor\u2019s budget is more limited, but the impact could be the same.\u00a0 The governor proposes to consolidate 36 separate public health programs into 10 new programs that the governor argues have similar functions. The aggregate funding for these programs stays the same.\u00a0 However, there is no guarantee that every single program will be protected from budget cuts.<\/p>\n

Instead of clearly disclosing his budget proposals in an item-by-item basis,the governor instead re-allocates those public health programs into ten areas and allows the Health Department to award grants from that pool.\u00a0 There is no obvious standard that the Department will use to allocate funding.<\/p>\n

While the governor argues that these 10 new programs have similar functions,in some areas that is not at all clear.\u00a0 For example, in the “Local health department public protection” plan lead poisoning programs<\/em> and tobacco enforcement<\/em> are lumped together.\u00a0 What\u2019s the logic of combining these program?\u00a0 Other than they are the activities of the local health departments, nothing much.\u00a0 \u00a0Tobacco enforcement addresses problems of illegal sales to minors and complaints about smoking in public places.\u00a0 Lead poisoning programs investigate the problems associated with exposures usually in indoor settings.<\/p>\n

Lumping those two programs into one makes little sense.\u00a0 So why is the governor proposing this consolidation?<\/p>\n

Since the governor\u2019s plan does not guarantee that these programs will continue to get current funding levels, and given that if it did there would be no reason for the consolidation, it is reasonable to assume that at least some of these programs will face cuts.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, the response from the legislature will be the same \u2013 rejection.<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s budget will be subject to scrutiny over the next couple of months.\u00a0 It contains measures worth supporting and worth rejecting.\u00a0 Hopefully, the governor and lawmakers get it right; the health of New Yorkers is at stake.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all for now.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be keeping an eye on the Capitol and will talk to you again next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listen: wamc.org\/post\/blair–horner-governor-cuomos-budget-health-care One of the state\u2019s most important public priorities is ensuring that New Yorkers have access to affordable and high quality medical care as well as providing health services to those who are poor or needy.\u00a0 Tens of billions of dollars are spent to meet those demands and this week the governor\u2019s health budget […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1483,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920\/revisions\/1483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}