January 23, 2024
About two years ago, when the Governor last proposed a Competitive Procurement in her executive budget strategy the Procurement proposal failed but the requirement going forward was for the state to hire an outside consultant to conduct an analysis and draft a report looking at the status of Medicaid managed care and MCOs, beginning with the carve in of behavioral health services. After numerous conversations with DoH leads it appeared to us that Boston Consulting Group (the second consulting firm that was hired to prepare the Report after the Rand Corporation report didn’t materialize) intended to only interview state officials and state agency staff to gather information. We were very upset about this and after several months of pushing, State Medicaid Director Amir Bassiri agreed that BCG should interview me on behalf of the NYS Council and the individuals we serve.
Today is the day for the Joint Legislative Budget Hearing (live on many Spectrum TV cable channels and online now) a question was asked by Assemblyman Ra what he referred to as the “Medicaid Procurement Report”. The Assemblyman was complaining that the Report was only received by lawmakers participating in the hearing yesterday. We scoured the internet and found the Report (ATTACHED). I haven’t had a chance to review it but we wanted to share it with you immediately.
It should be noted that during my interview with the Boston Consulting Group researchers, the NYS Council did NOT recommend the state move to a Competitive Procurement model – I argued vociferously for a carve out for 1.5 hours for all of the reasons we have discussed.