Picture courtesy of Meeting Member Rebecca A. Seawright’s workplace
Meri, who lives in Yorkville in my Manhattan district, lies awake at evening, sleepless with fear over her son Daniel. Born legally blind, Medicaid supported his imaginative and prescient remedy from childhood. The therapy finally stimulated his optic nerve sufficient to transmit indicators. In his twenties, Daniel can now see. Coupled with the arduous work of direct care professionals, this enabled Daniel to change into what Meri describes as “an ambulatory, verbal person, with a tremendous amount of charm.” However now she despairs over how for much longer these companies will probably be accessible to her son, and over who will look after him after she is gone. In Rhinebeck, ninety miles to the north, Kate’s evenings are additionally dominated by anxiousness. Relentless headlines of nursing residence workers shortages and closures has her fearing for the expert care sustaining her mom, Christina, in addition to the house itself: “I cannot imagine what we would do if we didn’t find a good nursing home. For many families in rural areas, our parents are waiting for hours in ERs. When they are ready to leave the hospital, they are waiting for days or more to find a nursing home.”
These two households—inversely positioned from one another by geography and their beloved one’s place on the life-stage spectrum—are linked by the Medicaid emergency impacting tens of millions of individuals with disabilities (PWD) and older adults, with cascading results that may degrade well being outcomes for each New Yorker. Medicaid — the joint federal and state program that gives medical insurance and entry to long-term look after almost 7 million New Yorkers— is imperiled like no different second since its delivery in 1965.
As chair of the Ageing Committee and former chair of the Folks with Disabilities Committee, I’m marshaling each useful resource, alongside advocates like LeadingAge NY, New York Incapacity Advocates (NYDA) and AHRC-NYC, to stabilize our system of care. This week, I reintroduced a invoice to offer wage enhancements for direct care professionals who look after New Yorkers with mental and developmental disabilities (I/DD) —like those working with Daniel— to extend workers retention. I used to be lead sponsor on legal guidelines to help major caregivers and to enhance pathways for extra older New Yorkers to “age in place” in their very own houses and communities. The one-house finances contains key restorations and I be a part of my colleagues in preventing for his or her enactment.
How did we get to this inflection level? On the state facet of the ledger, households like Kate’s are in misery as a result of New York has underinvested in long-term care suppliers. The state should match nursing residence reimbursement charges with inflation and better working prices, reimbursing suppliers from 2008-2025 with a calculus based mostly on the 2007 financial system. This has resulted in a $1.7 billion funding hole, with crushing penalties: 32 amenities and three,500 nursing residence beds have been compelled to shut. Seventy-two thousand beds are in monetary jeopardy, together with 60% of beds in Manhattan. This capability dop triggered a destabilizing ripple impact all through the bigger system: Unable to discharge sufferers into space nursing houses, hospitals discover themselves overcrowded, their emergency rooms backed up—New York at present has the sixth longest ER ready time within the nation—and high quality of care deteriorated.
On the federal facet, among the many most merciless insurance policies of the present administration is the plan to enact the most important Medicaid lower in historical past, an estimated $2.3 trillion, so they could fund their misguided priorities. The risk to on a regular basis New Yorkers is dire.
In keeping with the Group Service Society, almost half of NYC’s inhabitants—4 million kids and adults—plus one other 3 million residents statewide, rely on Medicaid (The federal authorities supplied round 63% of the overall price in 2023). These embody residents like Daniel and different folks with I/DD. And older adults like Christina, who’ve earned the suitable to reside out the remainder of their lives in a cushty and secure setting.
The federal agenda is as fiscally-irrational as it’s inhumane. As Meri additionally said, intervention therapies for Daniel allowed him a level of independence that meant vital public financial savings over institutional care, an final result that’s mirrored systemwide. This present plan defies compassion and widespread sense.
Now we have to face collectively as New Yorkers to counter this grave risk and to guard our households and pals who’re ageing and/or folks with disabilities. As a result of as we’ve realized from Meri and Kate, caring for a beloved one is neither a partisan difficulty or an upstate-downstate difficulty. It’s a human difficulty that impacts all of us.
Meeting Member Rebecca A. Seawright represents the Higher East Aspect, Yorkville and Roosevelt Island. The primary lady to serve her district, she was the Meeting lead sponsor of the ERA to the New York Structure, which voters enacted in 2024. She is Chair of the Ageing Committee, which oversees businesses and laws affecting New York’s almost 5 million older adults’ high quality of life and independence.
