The Blaz abolishes municipal workers medicare

  

 

CBS New York

de Blasio initiates pilot health insurance coverage plan with glossy card

NY Daily News

Mayor de Blasio unveiled the design for the city’s new health care card on Tuesday — even though uninsured New Yorkers won’t be able to use it for months.

Launching Aug. 1 in the Bronx, the NYC Care program is part of an effort to provide either insurance or health services to roughly 600,000 New Yorkers who are uninsured.

Half of them are undocumented immigrants who can’t be insured, and the rest either can’t afford health coverage through Affordable Care Act exchanges or have opted out of purchasing it.

Those roughly 300,000 New Yorkers who cannot be insured will be able to get an NYC Care card and membership that gives them access to a primary care doctor in the city’s Health + Hospitals network.

Undocumented immigrants already have guaranteed health care at the city’s public hospitals, but the new program is intended to help them better manage their health and avoid costly emergency room visits.

 The NYC Care card is expected to reach all five boroughs by the end of 2020 and cost $100 million a year when fully implemented, with about $25 million going toward Bronx memberships.

The city will also expand its MetroPlus program, the public hospital system’s health insurance program, as part of an overall effort to increase health care enrollment for the other 300,000 uninsured.

“We’re on track to guarantee health care for every single New Yorker,” de Blasio said in a statement. “Access to quality and affordable health care is one of the biggest burdens working people face. Now they won’t face it alone.”

Mayor Big Slow has made announcements like this and programs to help the low income citizens before and they have not been helpful nor have materialized. And his own and his administration's incompetence and prolifigate spending is now legend:

Ny Post

The idea here is to make it as user friendly as it possibly can be,” de Blasio said.

“We’re saying, come get this card, we’re going to assign you a doctor, we’re going to show you all the services you can get with this,” he added.

The mayor said his number crunches are still determining how much the plan will save in emergency room costs.

 He's not doing this to help people get health care, he's doing this to boost his national profile for his delusional presidential aspirations.

State made unnecessary Medicaid payouts

From Crain's:

Thanks to a lack of oversight, the state Health Department doled out $1.3 billion in six years in Medicaid premiums for people who were already enrolled in other comprehensive health plans, according to a new report from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The report found that the state Health Department is not quick enough to disenroll people when they sign up for coverage with another insurer. The overwhelming majority of those funds—about $1.2 billion—are not recoverable.

"Glitches in the state Department of Health's payment system and other problems led to over a billion dollars in unnecessary spending," DiNapoli said. "The department needs to improve its procedures and stop this waste of taxpayer money."

HHC has gigantic budget gap

From Capital New York:

The city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation is facing a $430 million budget gap for fiscal year 2015, its president told the City Council’s health committee on Monday.

That gap is expected to triple to nearly $1.4 billion by 2018, said H.H.C. president Alan Aviles, who will soon be leaving the nation’s largest municipal hospital system.

The deficits can be attributed to damage from Hurricane Sandy as well as skyrocketing pension costs, but the most basic challenge is that H.H.C. treats hundreds of thousands of patients who can’t pay for the full costs of their care.

H.H.C. provides about $700 million in uncompensated care each year, and 80 percent of its patients are either on Medicaid or uninsured.

Obamacare will screw every NYC taxpayer

From the NY Post:

The city’s generous health-care benefits for municipal workers might qualify as costly “Cadillac plans” that get socked with significant financial penalties under ObamaCare, Mayor Bloomberg’s budget director warned yesterday.

Councilman Jimmy Oddo (R-SI) raised the potentially explosive possibility during a routine budget hearing.

“It would mean the city would get a 40 percent excise tax,” Oddo pointed out.

When he asked Budget Director Mark Page if that was a concern, he got a one-word reply: “Yes.”

Employers who spend more than $10,200 a year on health insurance for an individual employee or $27,500 for a family would start getting penalized in 2018. The tax is aimed at prodding employers to eliminate bloated medical-insurance costs.

Public worker benefits are killing gov't services

From the NY Post:

Across New York, the cost of health benefits for retired government employees is growing so rapidly that it threatens to crowd out funding for essential government services. Rather than lay off police or close libraries, public officials may want to use their discretion to alter retiree health insurance — but some state legislators are trying to take away that discretion.

These lawmakers are introducing bills that would prevent government officials from reducing current benefit levels — in effect, forcing them to sacrifice core services instead.

In fiscal year 2012, New York City will pay $1.6 billion for health insurance for retired government employees — more than is budgeted for transportation and park operations combined. The state paid $1.3 billion for retiree health care in fiscal year 2011-12, as much as it gave to support the City University.

Retiree health-insurance costs are up 44 percent in the city budget and by a third in the state budget from just five years ago — and that’s still not enough to fully fund the future benefits that have been promised.

These unfunded liabilities are staggering — and growing. The most recent estimates are $84 billion for the city and $56 billion for the state. The Empire Center estimated the statewide unfunded liability at more than $200 billion in 2010.

New York City has the greatest liability because its health benefits are the most generous. It takes only 10 years of employment to vest for lifetime retiree health benefits, which begin upon retirement at any age and require no retiree premium contributions. The city even reimburses retirees over age 65 for the full cost of their Medicare Part B premiums.

Current law lets public employers make changes to health benefits. The only exception is for teachers in schools outside New York City; a 2009 law protects their retiree health benefits from reduction.

Now other unions are seeking the same protection. Six bills have been introduced in the Legislature to prevent state and local governments from reducing retiree health benefits unless public-employee unions agree to an equivalent reduction for their active members via collective bargaining — a highly unlikely event.

Their proponents claim these bills would have no fiscal impact because they provide no new benefits. But they would make it virtually impossible to save money at a time when the flexibility to grapple with pressing fiscal challenges is urgently needed.

As the costs of retiree health benefits grow, local governments and school districts across New York will have to choose between reasonable reductions in benefits or cuts in crucial services: police and fire, schools, roads and bridges, parks and so on.

Government retirees should always be treated fairly and with due respect for their public service, but it’s a mistake to tie the hands of state and local elected officials further. With health-care costs skyrocketing — and the unfunded liabilities already at staggering levels — they shouldn’t be put in a position where they have to lay off current workers and reduce services because they have no latitude in addressing retiree health-insurance costs.