Albany, NY – Democratic leaders in Washington may be celebrating the passage of the Senate’s version of health care reform on Thursday, but they aren’t celebrating in Albany. The same day Governor David Paterson issued a statement saying that he is “deeply troubled” by the Senate’s bill, which will cost New York an additional $1 billion that it doesn’t have.
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“I am deeply troubled that the Senate version of the bill worsens what was already an inequitable situation for New York,” said Paterson, who is already facing a $6.8 billion budget gap for the next fiscal year.
He said that the bill would mean an additional $1 billion annually in new state Medicaid costs to New York.
The costs could result in a 15 percent reduction in payments to hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies and community clinics because of strained state and city budgets, said the governor.
While he did commend the bill for moving toward insuring the 2.5 million uninsured New Yorkers, he also pleaded for a conference that would allow states to give their input directly.
“The House and Senate must convene a real conference committee to fairly merge these bills and allow our delegation to fight for equitable legislation for New York state,” he said.
Earlier this month Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg penned a joint letter to New York’s two U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, urging them to not allow New York to get the short end of the stick on health care reform.
“New Yorkers will more than pay their share for increasing health coverage around the country,” reads the letter. “All of the major financing options—from Medicare cuts, to Medicare tax increases, to excise taxes on higher cost health plans—can be expected to extract more revenue/savings from New Yorkers than the per capita national average. And, yet New York will receive far less than the national average in federal relief.”
Senators Schumer and Gillibrand were way out front in supporting this bill. I don’t think they really thought about the consequences for their state. It was a big liberal push from the Obama administration. Why aren’t we hearing from them now? Too liberal for my taste!!!!!!!!!! The actual bill is thousands of pages long and I wonder if anyone actually read it. Ha, ha, ha!!!!!!!!
Then why the h…. did our stupid senators vote for it????
Look at this! They only announce it after the fact. The crooked Politicians! Otherwise the NY senators would have had to vote against it. Down with Schumer a Hillary!
#3 schoomer and hillibarnd dont think…i dont either…but i wont vote for those jerks.
Obama tells Schumer to jump and the only question Schumer has if “How high?”
And charlie hill was claiming only home care abuse would be cut!This clearly proves otherwise.
We kept on telling you that the senators are not reading.We said listen to the talk shows.Now when you are thinking of what will be taken away from you freebies you’re talking taxpayers language.
So continue voting democrats and your taxes will continue going up up up!!!
This is ridiculous!!
Agencies serving special-needs individual are solely funded by medicaid dollars. HOW are they gonna fund those much-needed existing services now???
I hope this won’t affect them…
Obama (aka ‘beheima’) does not care about the people. The Senators do not care about the people. The Congresspeople do not care about the people. They care about ‘making history’. As long as their name and fame go down in history (who in the world cares about what the health care reform will do to the people – let them suffer the consequences of an instant not-thought-out plan that is shoved down their throats!). I hope Obama will go down in history in other ways, and that he’ll be history in 2012!
try to find a cardiologist after january 1….wait in line…..foolish piples
don`t worry the fed will print more $ to give to NY when they need it