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Gov. Kathy Hochul pledged to save a whopping $500 million in a controversial homecare program overhaul, but it’s limped through a slow and shaky rollout.
Hochul and her top advisors are standing by the payroll services overhaul for the consumer directed personal assistance program, or CDPAP, after moving to consolidate approximately 700 firms into one hand-picked company to pay people to take care of older relatives in last year’s budget deal.
“We feel confident at this point and certainly if we need to adjust we’ll make some adjustments,” Hochul told reporters after announcing her budget proposal Tuesday.
Last week, the Department of Health proudly touted that around 5,000 people had started the transition process to the new firm, Public Partnerships, LLC. The deadline for the nearly 250,000 caregivers in the state to transition is April 1.
“The facts and data show that the transition is proceeding efficiently and effectively,” state Health Commissioner Jim McDonald said.
But only 2% of people have started the transition, the data show.
“We actually feel like we will be very very quickly seeing those numbers go up,” said Kathryn Garcia, Hochul’s director of State Operations.
Garcia noted that the existing middlemen firms have been slow to hand over data about their consumers to the state and PPL to allow them to reach out to transition their caregivers directly.
PPL’s bid came in at around $1.8 billion for the five-year contract, according to its proposal to DOH released as part of one of the ongoing lawsuits trying to stop the transition.
Hochul’s administration said moving to a single payroll processor is meant to cut down the rapidly expanding growth of the program, which itself has been one of the more significant drivers of New York’s burgeoning medicaid spending overall.
The state division of the budget projects $504 million in savings as a result of the move to a single fiscal intermediary, though it’s unclear how accurate that projection may be given the alleged lack of hard data available to the state.
Several of the existing firms have sued the DOH, arguing that handing over data about their consumers without their consent violates their privacy rights under HIPAA.
According to an internal email uncovered in one of the lawsuits, PPL’s “facilitators” have access to information about every personal assistant in the database and can even contact them directly.
According to an offer letter given to one personal assistant from PPL obtained by The Post, the firm offered to pay the Brooklyn-based caregiver below the minimum wage for homecare aides.
The letter said the caregiver would make $18.10 per hour, despite the minimum wage for homecare workers in New York City being set at $19.10. The minimum wage for upstate homecare workers is $18.10.
“During the implementation period, our payroll and benefits processing system will be configured to NewYork State employer requirements,” PPL wrote in its bid proposal to take over the payroll services.
Right above that line of PPL’s proposal is a praiseful quote attributed to powerful healthcare union 1199SEIU.
“We know your organization has an understanding of how to support consumers and the personal assistants who make this program work,” the quote reads.
A spokesperson for 1199SEIU previously told The Post in September that “we are not advocating publicly or privately for any specific bidder.”
Hochul’s consolidation plan, ostensibly meant to cut down on waste, fraud and abuse, is also a massive boon for 1199SEIU which has been working behind the scenes to make sure it can now unionize the almost quarter of a million homecare aides.
Several of the lawsuits allege that 1199SEIU helped rig the bid for PPL, an accusation the union has called “blatantly false.”
The transition has also been dogged with a multi-million dollar resistance campaign from the existing murky payment services middlemen that Hochul’s administration has turned into a boogeyman – even launching their own ad campaign calling out the firms for “spreading lies”.
“This already shoddy transition now guarantees that service will be disrupted for those most in need and is just the latest evidence of a disastrous transition thanks to Gov. Hochul and this out of state company,” Bryan O’Malley, executive director of a group that represents that fiscal intermediaries, told The Post.
“They’re trying to do a masterful job of scaring people,” Hochul said Tuesday.
She denied that the state is trying to strip people of their care.
“I want to be sure that we have controls in place and safeguards in place to make sure that no one ever has to fear and has been created by these individuals. So we’re going to get it right,” Hochul said.
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