Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team this week released some data that begin to show how the program’s costs have soared out of control.
Specifically, as the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond points out, they show that New York Medicaid spending on “personal assistance” doubled over four years.
The category refers to non-medical services, such as bathing and feeding, for people with disabilities. The aides that do the work typically have little or no training.
State outlays for these services hit $5.7 billion last year, for a total of $11.4 billion when you include what the feds pay.
In 2016, even before the latest jump in costs, Hammond notes, New York was spending six times the US per-capita average on this category — and roughly half again the per-capita rate of the No. 2 state, Massachusetts.
Getting on top of this issue won’t cover the state’s entire $6 billion budget hole, but it’d be a start.