NORWICH – Governor Cuomo’s 2011-2012 executive budget proposal to cap the state’s share of Medicaid, take-over the administration of the medical services program and cut health care costs across the board by 2 percent leaves Chenango County’s social services commissioner with much to worry about.
“You can’t cap everything and expect programs to continue,” Department of Social Services Commissioner Bette Osborne told members of the Health and Human Services Committee yesterday.
While Osborne calculated, using 2010 state aid figures, that Chenango County could actually anticipate approximately $22,000 more for programs and services in the first year based on Cuomo’s plan, the figure will likely be absorbed by numerous uncertainties. They include: rising caseload numbers, how the state’s Medicaid administration take-over will impact the county’s responsibilities, and a whole host of cost shifts within various programs.
Proposed cost shifts would affect cash assistance, family assistance, safety net, adoption services, worker training, school counseling and summer recreational programs, she said.
“Some form of this is going to go through and we have to be ready for it,” Osborne said. In particular, the commissioner said she wondered how the funding changes would impact the “already dramatic number” of child protective caseloads in the county.
Currently, counties’ annual Medicaid increases are capped at 3.5 percent. With the proposed administration take-over and cuts to programs and services allocations, along with caps on matching funds from the federal government, Osborne said her own, personal worry is that New York will have no choice but to take it from local taxpayers.
New York’s plan would be the largest cut to health care services in New York State’s history, according to reports. It would cap Medicaid at about $15.1 billion a year. Cuomo’s budget aims to reduce the state’s share of Medicaid spending by $2.85 billion this year and by $4.6 billion for the fiscal year 2012-2013. Combined with lost federal matching funds, the total impact on the medical assistance program would be about $5.9 billion in the coming year and $15 billion over two years.
There are 4.7 million Medicaid recipients in the state.
Hospital, nursing home, and home care cumulative cuts from the past three years were $5.3 billion. Proposed new cuts in 2011-2012 alone would be $5.9 billion. Approximately 30 hospitals and more than 50 nursing homes in New York have already been closed in the last decade.
“I’m worried that these cuts are going to put the hospital (Chenango Memorial Hospital) in jeopardy,” Osborne said.
New York State blasted counties with a three percent increase in spending requirements for mandated programs last year. Medicaid and other state and federal government programs increased Chenango County’s local share by well over $3 million for the coming year.
It consumes approximately 70 percent of the real property tax levy.
For The Evening Sun’s 2011 Progress report, Chenango County Chairman Richard B. Decker had this to say about the state’s Medicaid take-over: “The cost of the administration is nothing. It just takes the control away from locals while still making them pay. They have no idea what it’s like out here in the real world.”