Medicaid unwind leaves younger New Yorkers vulnerable

Good morning and welcome to the Weekly New York Health Care newsletter, where we keep you posted on what’s coming up this week in health care news, and offer a look back at the important news from last week.

As states embark in the process of recertifying millions of Americans enrolled in Medicaid for the first time since before the pandemic, New York health officials have reported a surprising finding.

Survey found New Yorkers ages 20 to 34 were most unaware of the transition, Medicaid Director Amir Bassiri said during a conference presentation Thursday.

Among enrollees whose Medicaid coverage expired at the end of June, only 62 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 34 successfully reinrolled, according to preliminary state data. (The data includes only people processed through the New York State of Health marketplace, not local departments of social services.)

The statewide average renewal rate to date is 72 percent, although that is expected to rise by the end of this month.

it’s possible some of those younger adults shifted to employer-sponsored insurance or moved out of New York.

But the findings have prompted the state to reassess its public information campaign on the Medicaid unwind, so those who remain eligible don’t needlessly lose coverage, Bassiri said.

continued, Bassiri said he is “cautiously optimistic” about the state’s implementation so far of the sprawling recertification process, which requires redetermining the eligibility of some 9 million New York state residents by June 2024.

he noted that New York is not one of the states recently ordered by the federal government to pause procedural disenrollments, which is when someone who may be eligible for Medicaid loses coverage due to errors in their paperwork.

IN OTHER NEWS:

— NYU Long Island School of Medicine has received a $200 million gift to make full-tuition scholarships available in perpetuity to every student, regardless of need. The contribution comes from Kenneth Langone, who chairs NYU Langone’s board of trustees, and his wife, Elaine.

Yearly tuition at the medical school, which was established four years ago, costs nearly $60,000.

ON THE AGENDA:

— Thursday, 1 p.m The HHC Capital Corporation hosts its semi-annual meeting.

— Thursday, 3 p.m NYC Health + Hospitals’ board of directors meets.

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— NYC Health + Hospitals continues to rely heavily on temporary staff, even as the Covid-19 pandemic has subsided. The public hospital system has spent over $2 billion since 2020 on such workers, according to invoices obtained through a public records request by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a not-for-profit research organization, and shared exclusively with POLITICO.

Under Health + Hospitals’ contract with the private-equity-owned company RightSourcing, the firm works with numerous staffing agencies to fulfill the system’s requests for any kind of temporary health care worker — both clinical and nonclinical roles — and invoices the system on their behalf.

Originally the RightSourcing contract was approved under terms that spending would not exceed $140 million a year, materials from a 2020 Health + Hospitals finance committee meeting show. But that was before the pandemic, when staffing needs skyrocketed.

NOW WE KNOW — Heat-related illnesses have spiked as a result of record hot temperatures.

TODAY’S TIP — Volunteering late in life could help preserve your cognitive function.

STUDY THIS — Misdiagnoses lead to about 800,000 people across the US dying or suffering from permanent disabilities each year, a new study in BMJ finds.

— Biden administration asking employers to give more help to workers who lose Medicaid, The Associated Press reports.

— Providers still hesitate to prescribe buprenorphine for addiction, despite ‘X-waiver’ removal, STAT reports.

— Life expectancy increasingly figures into calculations about whether screenings and treatments are appropriate, The New York Times reports.

— Via Fierce Healthcare: “Providers improperly collected $784M from a fund for uninsured COVID patients. Now, the government wants it back.”

— Health policy wars consume appropriations bills, risking shutdown, Alice Miranda Ollstein reports.

— New Jersey’s health commissioner plans to retire this summer, Dustin Racioppi reports.

— Via POLITICO’s Ben Leonard: The VA’s new medical records system has gone haywire. Congress is alarmed.

MISSED A ROUNDUP? Get caught up on the New York Health Care Newsletter.