New York spent only $9.2 million on Medicaid in March — next to nothing when monthly outlays average almost $2 billion, and insanely little amid the coronavirus pandemic. What’s the deal?
As the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond explains, the Cuomo administration just delayed the payments to nominally balance the budget, a trick it also played a year ago.
The state Health Department put off paying providers until April, in the new fiscal year, and voila Medicaid met its budget cap.
Now you see how New York wound up with a $4 billion Medicaid deficit that the state hadn’t figured out how to close before COVID-19 further slammed all health programs.
The budget passed into law last month doesn’t solve the problem, either, but merely postpones needed slashing of state outlays in hopes the feds completely bail out Cuomo & Co. for years of overspending in the course of sending legitimate coronavirus relief.
When the reckoning finally comes, it’s going to be brutal.