NYS Council to Testify at Today’s Joint
February 8, 2022
Later today I will testify before the Joint Legislative Budget Committee to discuss proposals in the Governor’s executive budget related to the topics of Health/Medicaid. Advocates and other stakeholders selected to testify today can speak for 3 minutes. As such, I will offer a brief discussion of our positions on two issues: the $111M state share (grossing to $222 with federal match) funds that we worked so hard to compel the state to recoup from MCOs and return to OASAS and OMH, and the Governor’s Competitive Bid proposal that would change the way the state identifies MCOs to participate in the carve in of services provided to special needs populations, including behavioral health services.
We have updated the NYS Council Health/Medicaid hearing written testimony we sent you this morning. See attached revised document.
We updated our testimony after listening to intro testimony as follows:
1) On page 2, re: Competitive Bid proposal, SMD Brett Friedman just stated publicly that out of 40 states that have Medicaid managed care, only 3 do NOT use a competitive bid process to identify MCOs to contract with the state, New York being one of them. (Our info was different but we trust Brett’s data and have altered our testimony to line up with his statistics).
2) On page 5 in the section re: availability of Naloxone and Bupe, we wrote that over 100,000 New Yorkers have died of overdose. This is incorrect. Over 100,000 Americans have died due to Opioid overdose.
Our written testimony is attached. In addition, we are re-sharing our NYS Council 2022 Legislative Priorities document. Finally, attached is a list of witnesses selected to testify at today’s hearing.
The hearing begins at 9:30 a.m. Those who want to watch the Public Hearing can use the link below to tune in: