For immediate release
Contact: Liz Benjamin, Liz@MarathonStrategies.com, 518-424-0356
NEW YORK, February 1, 2023 – The Save NY’s Safety Net campaign today issued the following statement in response to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 2023-24 executive budget proposal:
“For two years, the state has known a crisis is coming this April for 2.3 million vulnerable New Yorkers who rely on the safety net health care system, yet the executive budget fails to advance real solutions to this life-threatening problem.
“We have repeatedly implored Governor Hochul’s administration to cancel the Medicaid pharmacy benefit ‘carve-out’ that will divert critical funding away from community providers who offer life-saving care and services. The coalition has presented the state Department of Health with a workable solution to meet the needs of predominantly low-income New Yorkers of color and pharmacies.”
“We’ve shared independent analyses showing that this carve-out scheme to move Medicaid’s pharmacy benefit from managed care to fee-for-service will cost the state millions of dollars. Yet it has all fallen on deaf ears.
“The governor has put forth a convoluted payment mechanism that fails to adequately protect providers and the patients they serve. Effectively, it’s little more than a life raft full of holes.
“The wellbeing and safety New York’s most vulnerable now rests in the Legislature’s hands. The dozens of safety net providers from across the state who make up the coalition are united in their opposition to the governor’s non-solution. We will work with the lawmakers who have long supported our efforts to provide a workable solution that preserves the safety net and enacts necessary reforms in the final budget.
“In the end, New Yorkers will remember who their champions were come April 1.”
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Save New York’s Safety Net is a statewide coalition of community health clinics, community-based organizations and specialized HIV health plans committed to serving vulnerable New Yorkers across the state, ending the epidemic, and saving the 340B drug discount program.
