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Gannett
News Service
ERIKA ROSENBERG, ALBANY BUREAU
(July 29, 2003) - ALBANY - How to
rein in spending on the state's $41 billion Medicaid
health program for the poor is the unenviable job of the Senate
Medicaid Reform Task
Force, which met for the first time on Monday.
Not everyone at the meeting even
agreed on that goal. Dennis Rivera, head of the
powerful health care workers' union that added billions to the Medicaid
tab in a January 2002 deal, said the task force should not simply
focus on cutting expenses.
" If the task force goal deals
exclusively with reducing costs, I think that is not
working in the most effective way. We have to take a look at the
whole health care needs of our community," said Rivera, head
of the New York City-based Local 1199 of the Service Employees International
Union.
The union won a huge victory in January
2002 when Gov. George Pataki and the Legislature passed a bill pumping
more than $2 billion into the health care system to boost salaries
for nurses, aides and other employees. Now, the added costs are
another strain on state and county budgets. The state raised income
and sales taxes this year, in part to avoid big cuts to health spending,
but the state comptroller predicts a deficit next year of $5.3 billion.
" I'm not going to second-guess
anything that was done in the past," said Senate
Majority Leader Joseph Bruno of the 2002 deal. Bruno, R-Brunswick,
Rensselaer County, created the task force.
He said boosting salaries to attract
and keep good health care workers was an important goal.
The task force plans to hold discussions
with health experts across the state and
develop recommendations by the start of next year's legislative
session in January.
Pataki and Assembly Democrats would have to agree to put any reforms
into place.
One of the task force's chairmen
predicted it will reach its goal of finding ways to
rein in costs for one simple reason - it must be done.
" We can't afford to go on the
way that we're going," said Sen. Raymond Meier,
R-Western, Oneida County.
Since 1995, Medicaid spending in
New York has grown 68 percent to $41.3 billion this
year. While the federal government will pick up $21 billion, the
state will pay almost
$14 billion and counties about $6 billion.
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