Cuomo: Health Exchange ‘Endangered’ By Lack Of Medicaid Waiver
By Laura Nahmias Capital New York February 13, 2014
New York’s health exchange could be in jeopardy if the federal government doesn’t grant New York a $10 billion Medicaid waiver quickly, Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters during a conference call Thursday morning.
“If we don’t get the waiver, it will endanger the operation of our health exchange,” Cuomo said.
That’s a new line of argument from Cuomo, who has previously argued that slow federal action will lead to the closure of Brooklyn hospitals. The argument also implicitly threatens to upend one of Obamacare’s greatest success stories so far: New York’s exchange has been one of the least glitchy, busiest exchanges in the country, having enrolled more than 400,000 people in health plans so far.
Cuomo again laid the responsibility for hospitals’ futures at the feet of HHS officials.
“If we do not get the waiver quickly, there will be a health care crisis in this state and hospitals will close, especially in Brooklyn.”
“Time is very short. We have been told numerous time before, the letter is in the mail,” he said of the waiver.
“And the old joke is true: I’ll believe it when I see it. If we do not see it in the immediate future, we will start to close hospitals and I’m going to be quite clear that the responsibility lies with the federal department of HHS.”
Cuomo also addressed a recent letter from House Oversight COmmittee Chairman Darrell Issa to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius calling on her to clawback Medicaid funds the stateimproperly received in prior years before granting the state any new money.
Cuomo dismissed Issa’s threats as “vitriol”, and said the issue of prior year repayments wasn’t linked to the status of the waiver.
New York’s history of problems with its Medicaid program are over, Cuomo said: “We are in the present.”