Isabel Garcia, WROC: Following recent announcements regarding the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP), assembly members are calling for a federal investigation into the transition.
This week, the Department of Health maintained its April 1 deadline for New Yorkers enrolled in the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) to change over to the single, state-selected administrator, Public Partnerships, LLC (PPL).
Leaders did offer a 30-day ‘grace period’ for the hundreds of thousands of participants (between recipients of care and their providers), but did note that those would be paid out retroactively.
CDPAP is an estimated $9 billion Medicaid-funded program and, during the FY 2025 budget, was deemed ‘too expensive’ to maintain, with costs ballooning and state leaders citing fraud and mismanagement of the several hundred fiscal intermediaries (FIs) as previously structured.
In Albany on Tuesday, Assemblymember Josh Jensen, the senior ranking member of the Health Committee, was joined by colleagues in the Republican Conference Party to amplify calls for a delay. He and Senator Pat Gallivan recently submitted legislation for introduction, which he describes as quite simple: crossing off ‘April 1’ and switching it to ‘July 1.’
“Late Sunday night, the Health Commissioner admitted that this transition has not gone to plan. And while he is refusing to call what they’ve done a ‘delay’ – it is a temporary reprieve for people who have started the transition process and will not finish by April 1st,” Assemblymember Jensen said. “Now that we have acknowledged – that the Executive branch has acknowledged – that this has not gone to plan, the time is now to embrace the legislation that myself and my good friend and colleague Pat Gallivan introduced – whether it’s our legislation or the push from members in the majority in each houses – to put partisanship aside, to put blame aside and say that more than one thing can be true at the same time.”
He added, “The transition to a statewide FI may work – it may save half a billion dollars in the long run, there may be bad actors in the field who have utilized it up until now — as a personal profit-making endeavor. But it can also be true that there are a lot of good organizations who have, and are continuing to care about these people – these New Yorkers who want to stay in their homes, who want to receive the personal care that they desperately need and the survival of a critically important program that meets their needs.”
Following the DOH announcement Monday afternoon about the grace period, State Senate Republican Leader Rob Ortt and other members of the Senate Republican Conference penned a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requesting a federal investigation into the transition.
The letter reads in part, “The transition from approximately 700 fiscal intermediaries (FIs) to a single, state-selected intermediary has been fraught with problems from the outset. To date, there is no clear evidence that the new system will improve care or efficiency. Instead, the risks far outweigh any potential benefits.”
PPL leaders said Monday there are several ways to make the switch over to the company, from virtual sessions, calling the company’s support center, email, or text.
