NELP Urges New York Governor Kathy Hochul to Delay Flawed Transition of Medicaid CDPAP Homecare Program to Avoid Harm to Clients and Workers

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) responded to Governor Kathy Hochul’s flawed handling of the transition of New York’s Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP)—a New York State Medicaid program that allows elderly persons and persons with disabilities who receive vital homecare services through the program to choose and hire their own personal caregivers—to a single statewide fiscal intermediary, the private equity–backed firm Public Partnerships, LLC:

“The National Employment Law Project urges Governor Hochul to postpone the disastrously orchestrated transition of the state’s Medicaid CDPAP program. There were serious concerns to begin with about the state’s selection of an out-of-state, private equity–backed corporation to run the program. Then it was revealed that many homecare workers would lose their health benefits in the process. But now the transition has been so poorly executed that, on the eve of its effective date, only a small fraction of homecare workers have been enrolled with the new provider. Unless the transition is postponed, seniors and people with disabilities will be left without the vital services and workers without the paychecks on which they both depend.

Unless the transition is postponed, seniors and people with disabilities will be left without the vital services and workers without the paychecks they depend on.

Homecare workers, who are overwhelmingly Black and Latina women, provide essential services yet themselves often live paycheck to paycheck. A poorly managed transition that leaves these workers and the people they serve in the lurch should be unacceptable to all New Yorkers. NELP therefore joins the growing chorus urging Governor Hochul to postpone the transition until it can be done in an orderly, responsible way that does not cause serious and unnecessary harm to homecare recipients and workers.”

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