November 11, 2025
BH Workforce Hearing 12/10 in NYC
This hearing is being held in NYC and is by invitation only. See highlighted information and contact Willie Sanchez to request an invite to testify.
Dec. 10 Joint – Assembly Standing Committee on Mental Health Chair: Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon and Assembly Standing Committee on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Chair: Assembly Member Phil Steck Public Hearing: Behavioral Health Workforce Place: Assembly Hearing Room, 250 Broadway, 19th Floor, New York, New York Time: 11:00 A.M. Contact: Willie Sanchez (518) 455-4371 Media Contact: Assembly Press Office (518) 455-3888 ORAL TESTIMONY BY INVITATION ONLY
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Adams, in his lame duck era, unveils new model for New York City mental health crisis response
BY Maya Kaufman | 11/15/2025 05:00 AM EST, Politico PrO
NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams is moving to significantly reshape a city program that sends health care workers to respond to some mental health emergencies, weeks before he leaves office.
The program, which is known as B-HEARD, will assemble three-person teams of nurses, social workers and ambulance drivers to handle nonviolent, mental health-related 911 calls under the new model announced Friday. Teams were previously staffed by two EMS workers from the New York City Fire Department and one social worker from NYC Health + Hospitals.
City officials said the redesign will enable B-HEARD to expand more quickly because it will sidestep the recruitment and retention issues that plague FDNY’s EMS division. The new model will also improve the city’s increasingly long emergency response times by freeing up some FDNY ambulances and EMTs, officials said.
NYC Health + Hospitals President and CEO Mitchell Katz said the change stemmed from conversations he had over the summer with FDNY about B-HEARD’s staffing challenges.
“The program cannot be expanded, cannot go to more neighborhoods because there are not more EMTs to hire,” Katz told reporters during a briefing Friday.
“We will now be able to expand the program as the city needs it because we will be able to hire the workforce,” he added.
Health + Hospitals plans to hire 31 nurses, 31 ambulance drivers and eight supervisors to staff the new model, which is expected to go live in the spring of 2026. B-HEARD will operate as usual until then, Katz said.
The city’s announcement, unveiled in the final weeks of the Adams administration, was met with skepticism by union leaders and mental health advocates who have followed B-HEARD’s evolution since former Mayor Bill de Blasio launched the initiative as a pilot in 2021.
Henry Garrido, executive director of District Council 37, the umbrella organization for the unions that represent the vast majority of FDNY’s EMS workers, said any changes to B-HEARD should be at the discretion of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and his chosen fire commissioner.
“Mayor Adams’ decision to shift the response for mental health calls from the trained EMTs and paramedics at FDNY to Health + Hospitals is shortsighted and unnecessarily rushed,” Garrido said in a statement. “The plan privatizes the ambulance system with hospital contractors instead of simply backfilling the vacant positions perforating our EMS ranks.”
The redesign also appears to buck best practices for these kinds of crisis response initiatives. One often-cited model is CAHOOTS out of the small city of Eugene, Oregon, which sends behavioral health workers and EMTs to respond to crises. Similarly, Denver’s STAR program relies on behavioral health clinicians and paramedics to engage individuals experiencing mental health distress.
“This idea’s out of left field,” said Jordyn Rosenthal, director of advocacy for Community Access, a mental health organization that has pressed for peer counselors to be added to B-HEARD teams.
Dora Pekec, a spokesperson for Mamdani’s transition team, expressed confidence that he would still be able to fulfill his campaign pledge to expand and overhaul B-HEARD as part of a new Department of Community Safety.
“We remain confident that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will implement his full vision for B-HEARD within the Department of Community Safety so we can finally meet our city’s dire mental health crisis head-on and deliver excellent public safety for all New Yorkers,” she said in a statement.
The timing of the changes to the program, however, is awkward. An EMS union spokesperson told POLITICO the state Department of Health is hosting a ceremony today in Syracuse to recognize the department’s involvement in B-HEARD.
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In case you missed it…..
OASAS recently released an updated APG manual providing clinical and medical billing guidance for OASAS outpatient programs:
https://oasas.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2025/11/apg-manual.pdf
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Judge says he’ll approve opioid settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue and Sackler family
STAT10, 11/15/25
NEW YORK — A federal bankruptcy court judge on Friday said he will approve OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma’s latest deal to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids that includes some money for thousands of victims of the epidemic.
The deal overseen by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane would require members of the Sackler family who own the company to contribute up to $7 billion and give up ownership. The new agreement replaces one the U.S. Supreme Court rejected last year, finding it would have improperly protected members of the family against future lawsuits. The judge said he would explain his decision in a hearing on Tuesday.
The deal is among the largest in a series of opioid settlements brought by state and local governments against drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies that totaled about $50 billion. It could close a long chapter — and maybe the entire book — on a legal odyssey over efforts to hold the company to account for its role in an opioid crisis connected to 900,000 deaths in the U.S. since 1999, including deaths from heroin and illicit fentanyl.
Lawyers and judges involved have described it as one of the most complicated bankruptcies in U.S. history. Ultimately, attorneys representing Purdue, cities, states, counties, Native American tribes, people with addiction and others were nearly unanimous in urging the judge to approve the bankruptcy plan for Purdue, which filed for protection six years ago as it faced lawsuits with claims that grew to trillions of dollars.
Purdue lawyer Marshall Huebner told the judge that he wishes he could “conjure up $40 trillion or $100 trillion to compensate those who have suffered unfathomable loss.” But without that possibility, he said: “The plan is entirely lawful, does the greatest good for the greatest number in the shortest available timeframe.”
The opposition is much quieter this time around
The saga has been emotional and full of contentious arguments between the many groups that took Purdue to court, often exposing a possible mismatch between the quest for justice and the practical role of bankruptcy court.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a previous deal because it said it was improper for Sackler family members to receive immunity from lawsuits over opioids. In the new arrangement, entities who don’t opt into the settlement can sue them. Family members are collectively worth billions, but much of their assets are held in trusts in offshore accounts that would be hard to access through lawsuits.
This time, the government groups involved have reached an even fuller consensus and there’s been mostly subdued opposition from individuals. Out of more than 54,000 personal injury victims who voted on whether the plan should be accepted. just 218 said no. A larger number of people who are part of that group didn’t vote.
Unlike with other proceedings, there were no protests outside the courthouse.
A handful of objectors spoke Thursday at the hearing, sometimes interrupting the judge. Some said that only the victims, not the states and other government entities, should receive the funds in the settlement. Others wanted the judge to find the members of the Sackler family criminally liable — something Lane said is beyond the scope of the bankruptcy court, but that the settlement doesn’t bar prosecutors from pursuing.
A Florida woman whose husband struggled with addiction after being given OxyContin following an accident told the court that the deal isn’t enough.
“The natural laws of karma suggest the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma should pay for what they have done,” Pamela Bartz Halaschak said via video.
Deal would be among the biggest opioid settlements
A flood of lawsuits filed by government entities against Purdue and other drugmakers, drug wholesalers and pharmacy chains began about a decade ago.
Most of the major ones have already settled for a total of about $50 billion, with most of the money going to fight the opioid crisis. There’s no mechanism for tracking where it all goes or overarching requirement to evaluate whether the spending is effective. Those hit the hardest generally haven’t had a say.
The Purdue deal would rank among the largest of them. Members of the Sackler family would be required to pay up to $7 billion and give up ownership of the company. None have been on its board or received payments since 2018. Unlike a similar hearing four years ago, none were called to testify in this week’s hearing.
About 139,000 people have active claims for the money. Many of them, however, have not shown proof that they were prescribed Purdue’s opioids and will receive nothing. Assuming about half of the individual claimants would qualify, lawyers expect that those who had prescriptions for at least six months would receive about $16,000 each and those who had them more briefly would get around $8,000, before legal fees that would reduce what people actually receive.
People will have until March 1 to agree not to sue the Sacklers and apply for the funds.
One woman who had a family member suffer from opioid addiction told the court by video Thursday that the settlement doesn’t help people with substance use disorder.
“Tell me how you guys can sleep at night knowing people are going to get so little money they can’t do anything with it,” asked Laureen Ferrante of Staten Island, New York.
Christopher Shore, a lawyer representing a group of individual victims, said in court Friday that the settlement is a better deal than taking on Sackler family members in court. “Some Sacklers are bad people,” he said, “but the reality is that sometimes bad people win in litigation.”
Most of the money is to go to state and local governments to be used in their efforts to mitigate damage of the opioid epidemic. Overdose death numbers have been dropping in the past few years, a decline experts believe is partly due to the impact of settlement dollars.
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SFY 27 STATE BUDGET
Division of Budget SFY 2027 Quick Start Budget Meeting Overview
On November 12th, the State Division of Budget held a Quick Start Budget meeting for SFY 2027. To view the full meeting please click here. Representatives in attendance include Budget Director Blake Washington, Matt Howard (Deputy Budget Director), Mark Massaroni (Deputy Budget Director), Rita Doulis (Deputy Comptroller for Budget and Policy Analysis in the Comptroller’s Office), Jeff DeGironimo (Senate Finance Secretary, Minority Conference), Chris Friend (New York State Senate Minority Conference), Philip Fields (Secretary to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee), Josh Risler (NYS Assembly Republican Conference).
Blake Washington shared that the State’s finances remain favorable, with tax revenues higher than expected thanks to increased revenues from the pass-through entity tax (PTET) and income taxes, a stronger labor market, higher consumer spending, and positive economic outlook. Wall Street has been performing well, and the State relies heavily on this sector, those bonuses will be important to tax revenues. $3.3 billion in breathing room from increased revenue receipts (lowering the state’s budget gap from $7.5 billion to $4.2 billion) puts the State in a good place, however $800 million in new costs through April 1, 2026, and $3.4 billion for SFY 2026-27 thanks to federal enactment of HR1 is a significant concern.
Taking a closer look, all conferences estimate the U.S. GDP to grow by 1.7-1.9 percent in 2026, with inflation easing a bit recently. Budget Director Washington shared that state agencies are doing everything they can to find efficiencies and critically looking at contracts and spending items, which helped to enable the Executive to handle the $750 million budget gap this year. Several charts included below from the meeting provide further details on the State’s budget gaps, tax receipts, State spending with a specific look at Medicaid enrollment, economic outlook factors, and more.
Economic and tax forecasts risks for the State include highly concentrated economic activity, for example a downturn in Wall Street has a large impact on the State, as well as progressive income tax structure; financial sector performances and bonuses; federal policy risks including monetary policy, federal spending, tax code changes; and global risks.
Conclusions:
- The economic outlook for the US and NYS has improved compared to forecasts from spring 2025
- Tax receipts forecasts for the current and upcoming fiscal year have been revised upward by a total of $4.4 billion
- Medicaid and school aid continue to be drivers of spending growth in the current and outyears
- Cumulative outyear budget gaps were reduced in the Mid-Year update but remain
- Uncertainty to New York’s economy and financial plan remain elevated driven by
- Federal policy and highly concentrated economic growth
Wage growth, stubborn high enrollment, and HR1 impacts are the reasons for the nearly $5 billion growth in spending on Medicaid.
Cost increases largely because of lower federal funding assistance.
Wage growth will slow in the coming year.
The Executive is a bit less optimistic than the rest of the conferences.
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How Cigna Saves Millions by Having Its Doctors Reject Claims Without Reading Them
https://www.propublica.org/article/cigna-pxdx-medical-health-insurance-rejection-claims