May 24, 2022

Please make a call to the Albany office of your State Senator and ask that he/she please support the bill discussed in the Memo (attached), and ask that he/she press for Senate leaders to bring it to a full house vote before the end of session.  Feel free to use our Memo in Support to draft your own Memo, and send it to your representatives.  We just sent our Memo to the full Senate.  (THE ASSEMBLY HAS ALREADY PASSED THEIR VERSION OF THE BILL.)

THANK YOU!

———- Forwarded message ———

Good afternoon:

With your support and assistance, earlier this year our association implemented a successful advocacy campaign to require the Office of Health Insurance Programs to enforce certain performance targets that are contractually required of MCOs participating in the carve in of behavioral health services in Medicaid managed care.  During this effort we learned that the state had retroactively implemented amendments to the state’s Model Contract without informing stakeholders who are directly impacted by the changes.

The bill discussed in the Memo (attached) would require OHIP to make public any changes it has made to the state’s Model Contract – the governing document that sets out the contract terms MCOs and the state must follow in the implementation of Medicaid managed care. Medicaid beneficiaries, healthcare providers and New York tax payers deserve to know when the state makes changes to the Model Contract. 

Transparency should the standard in this situation.  The bill would require nothing more than for the Department of Health to post Model Contract changes to its’ website in a timely manner, and via the NYS Register.  There is no required comment period – this is about transparency and consumer education.

Please support S9207 and urge Senate leadership to bring this legislation to the floor for a vote before the end of session.

Many thanks for your support and your service to all New Yorkers,
Lauri Cole, Executive Director
on behalf of the 111 members of the New York State Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare