Fighting to make sure New York’s community-based mental
health providers have the resources they need
An interview with New York State Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare Executive Director Lauri Cole
NYN’s First Read – An article by Tim Murphy
Recently, the Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul enacted a mandate in the newest state budget saying that mental health and addiction service providers statewide must be reimbursed by private health plans at rates at least on par with Medicaid reimbursements. The mandate was the culmination of a decade-long fight for the mandate on the part of the New York State Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, an advocacy group for community mental health and substance treatment providers statewide, who’ve long said that the paltry reimbursement on private plans forces them to turn away needy patients.
The mandate, say the providers, will help expand care and treatment for countless New Yorkers experiencing opioid addiction – particularly in New York City, which reported an all-time-high for overdose deaths in 2022. And according to the council, the mandate is also good news for the one in three residents of New York state facing a mental health issue.
New York Nonprofit Media spoke on May 23 with Albany-based Lauri Cole, executive director of the half-century-old , about the long pathway to victory on the mandate, the other things that the council does, and the personal experiences that drive her work.
The full article is available online here:
https://www.nynmedia.com/personality/2024/06/fighting-make-sure-new-yorks-community-based-mental-health-providers-have-resources-they-need/397379/
NEW YORK NONPROFIT MEDIA FIRST READ FEATURES OPINION PIECE BY LAURI COLE REGARDING COMMERCIAL INSURANCE MANDATE
Compiled by Angelique Molina-Mangaroo
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Opinion: New York is ending discriminatory insurance practices
Imagine you’ve contracted a debilitating illness, so you try to find a doctor to treat you. Then you find out that most healthcare providers won’t accept you as a patient because the insurance you have won’t adequately reimburse them for the cost of the treatment. As a result, you call every doctor in your community day after day, only to find that the list your insurance carrier gave you only included doctors not offering this care or others who aren’t even accepting new patients.
For decades, this is the stark reality many individuals with commercial insurance coverage have encountered when seeking mental health or substance use disorder treatment in New York state.
Why is this considered an acceptable standard for those living with mental illness or addiction? When left untreated, these medical conditions can have lasting detrimental impacts including premature death and permanent disability. For far too long, this discriminatory reimbursement practice has been a reality of life for millions of New Yorkers. Now, thanks to Gov. Hochul and the state Legislature, this discrimination will finally end.
Read more here.
– Lauri Cole
2024 NYS LEGISLATIVE SESSION CONCLUDES
The 2024 NYS Legislative Session has concluded its work for this year and lawmakers are returning to their districts to connect with constituents. In total, over 800 individual bills were passed by both houses out of approximately 17,000 bills introduced since the session started in January. Passed bills will now need to be transmitted to Governor Hochul’s desk before the end of the year for her to sign, veto or seek chapter amendments for.
Governor Hochul’s surprise announcement that she was temporarily halting the implementation of New York City’s congestion pricing initiative shook up what had been a rather uneventful end of the legislative year. The congestion pricing tax was slated to take effect on June 30 and would have charged a base daytime toll of $15 for drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street. The Governor floated an alternative proposal that would have created a ‘payroll mobility tax’ on NYC employers however numerous lawmakers rejected this possibility outright and Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the majority leader, said her caucus had not been able to rally around any of the budget proposals being offered in the session’s final hours and would leave for the year without a legislative fix to the MTA budget hole that now exists.
The NYS Council’s OMIG bill did not get through the Assembly before the end of session despite the Senate having passed it by a vote of 60-0 and despite constant advocacy, numerous bill amendments to satisfy the concerns of all parties, and significant financial resources spent to ensure we were pushing a bill that met federal and state standards and that did not conflict with OMIGs primary mission to root out fraud from the Medicaid system. As we have stated before, the vast majority of OMIG audit take backs are not based on findings of fraud – they are based on human error that is unrelated to the provision of services or the quality of those services.
Absent a call for a “special session” legislators won’t return to Albany again until January 2025 when the next session begins.