Schumer: Help is on the way
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- December
- 29
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer said today that the federal government could be coming to New York’s financial rescue with at least $5 billion a year for Medicaid.
The relief would be part of a federal bailout proposal being drawn up by President-elect Barack Obama and congressional leaders. It is expected to total between $80 billion and $100 billion this year in Medicaid funding for states in addition to money for infrastructure maintenance and improvement, according to Schumer.
Schumer said the proposal being discussed would temporarily boost New York’s Medicaid reimbursement rate by about 10 percent, which would yield an extra $5 billion annually for the state.
The federal government, state and counties share the cost of Medicaid, but New York receives a smaller percentage of the total cost than other states because of its wealth. New York spends more per capita ($2,283) on Medicaid, a $45 billion program, than any other state in the country and more than twice the national average ($1,026). Congress and the Obama administration hope to have the stimulus package passed by Congress and signed into law by the end of January, Schumer said.
This entry was posted
on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 11:37 am by Cara Matthews.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
