This year’s New York State budget includes many painful cuts, but thanks to your hard work we have won some critical healthcare victories that will help protect patients and caregivers long into the future.
New York has been far ahead of the national curve in funding care at home, likely saving hundreds of millions of dollars by avoiding unnecessary and expensive institutionalization. But, until now, the way that home care services were delivered was not sustainable. Workers were making poverty wages, and home-bound patients couldn’t rely on getting the same quality of care from month to month. No more!
In the budget being voted on right now we won major changes in home care that will raise wages for tens of thousands of home care workers in New York. The home care provisions will rationalize the care delivery system, and establish a flexible, well-trained workforce, all to meet the challenges of providing quality, sustainable long-term care in various settings.
We also lobbied successfully for a medical indemnity fund to pay for the future health care costs of neurologically impaired newborns - at some hospitals this will mean double-digit reductions in insurance premiums, which will help to keep maternity wards open and thriving throughout New York.
Victories in home care and the newborn indemnity funds are just some of the advances in health reform being proposed in this budget. Together, we made them happen.
