End the Medicaid Funding Crisis

End the Medicaid Funding Crisis

Medicaid Equity, NOW!

All New Yorkers deserve equal access to quality healthcare, no matter their income or which community they live in. Yet today in New York, Medicaid pays hospitals 30% less than the actual cost of care for treating low-income seniors, people with disabilities, and children from low-income families.

Failure to fix Medicaid underpayments not only mean severe cuts in mental health services while children and seniors on Medicaid experience difficulty accessing needed health care services, underpayments are also pushing struggling safety net hospitals to the brink, creating longer wait times in emergency rooms, and contributing to more dangerous healthcare staffing shortages. At the same time, Medicaid underpayments are already severely harming low-income New Yorkers, especially in our Black and Latino communities, leading to worse health outcomes and shorter life expectancies.

The Medicaid funding crisis is already at New York’s door, but there is a commonsense solution: New York’s leaders must increase Medicaid reimbursements to cover the full cost of care, so that all New Yorkers have access to quality care.

FAILURE TO FULLY FUND MEDICAID IS NOT AN OPTION

  • Almost half of all New Yorkers rely on the state-funded Medicaid system for their healthcare coverage. And while private insurance pays hospitals 100% or more to cover the cost of hospital care, New York State’s Medicaid program pays hospitals 30% less than the full cost of the care they provide for Medicaid patients.
  • Continued Medicaid underpayment has already created a healthcare crisis in our cities and rural parts of the state that further threatens quality of care for all New Yorkers.

WHAT FULLY FUNDING MEDICAID MEANS FOR NEW YORKERS

  • New York faces a growing mental health crisis in our schools and on our streets, while hospitals have lost 850 mental health beds in recent years. Full Medicaid funding means hospitals can provide the mental health services people need.
  • In New York, low-income women are more likely than other women to have potentially life-threatening complications during or after childbirth. Fixing Medicaid underpayments will help ensure that all mothers and babies receive the care they need.
  • Half of New York hospitals have reported reducing and/or eliminating health services due to short staffing, and the staffing shortage is projected to get worse. New York’s Medicaid program must reimburse the actual cost of delivering care so that hospitals can hire the staff they need to provide quality care to New Yorkers.

A COMMONSENSE SOLUTION

  • If New York increases Medicaid reimbursements, the federal government will pay for half of the cost, reducing the cost to New York taxpayers by 50%.

For more information, please contact media@healthcareedproject.org.