Cuomo’s antipathy to the elderly didn’t begin with COVID-19, but given the veneration he’s enjoyed, you’d never know it.
When I was commissioner at the NYC Department for the Aging, I was in Washington in 1998 on city business. While meeting with New York congressional staff, they complained about the actions of the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in taking his hatchet to the popular “Section 202” housing program for the elderly. That secretary was Andrew M. Cuomo.
Public housing, nearly everywhere in the nation, is usually adjudged to be a failure in serving its lower income residents.
Enter the lobby of a “202” residence and you might think you’re in a Hyatt or a Marriott, not in a typical public housing property.
The Clinton-Cuomo budget request for Section 202 housing was $595 million in fiscal year 1997, but was chopped down to only $300 million for fiscal 1998, nearly a 50 percent cut. If Jack Kemp, Ben Carson, or another Republican HUD secretary had proposed that, the howls might still be echoing.
It was because of 202’s popularity, said congressional aides, that Secretary Cuomo calculated he could rob $295 million (nearly $500 million in 2021 dollars) from it to fund his homeless initiatives, and figured Congress would restore the senior housing dollars.
He was right. Congress did replenish the funds for the “202” housing, and Secretary Cuomo kept the money he had re-directed to homeless programs.
Secretary Cuomo’s raid on senior housing was a precursor to his deadly decisions to rush COVID-infected patients into New York’s nursing homes.
In coming decades, New York state is projected to lose population in all age categories, except one: those 65 and older. By 2040, the number of state residents over 65 will increase by fully 25 percent. The 85+ population, our frailest, will grow by an astounding 75 percent.
“Based on past outreach to over 1,900 individuals awaiting services [such as EISEP home care and home-delivered meals] in eight [New York] counties, the Association [on Aging in New York] determined that 10 percent of them had been admitted to nursing homes, while 6 percent had received Medicaid home-based or community-based care,” the study states.
For fiscal year 2022, which began April 1, the governor proposed to reduce the budget of his State Office for the Aging (NYSOFA) by 2 percent while the senior population is rapidly expanding. Similar proposed cuts to the aging budget have been the general pattern during the Andrew Cuomo era.
But by being penurious with these relatively inexpensive NYSOFA-funded services, the Cuomo administration is driving fragile seniors into hospitals and nursing homes. The cost to offer part-time home care to a frail senior is less than $7,000 per year, yet that study exposed that one of every six people on waiting lists soon winds up on much more expensive Medicaid home care, or even in nursing homes costing $150,000 and up.
That’s surely the single largest increase in annual Medicaid spending in any U.S. state, ever. Wouldn’t a $7,000 investment in senior home care be an obvious choice versus risking a $150,000 Medicaid nursing home payment before very long?
Our governor is facing multiple scandals, but disturbing as they all are, he deserves due process before final judgments are rendered.
Gov. Cuomo’s treatment of seniors, however, is apparent. Forcing COVID-19 patients into nursing homes had fatal consequences. And his actions at HUD and pinching state aging services reflect a decades-long indifference to the problems of older people. To begin atoning in a small way, why not eliminate those waiting lists for home care and meals for the home-bound elderly?
You’d save many times that expense in Medicaid costs this very year.
