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Counties throughout New York State are at risk of having to spend possibly millions of dollars from local taxpayers to fund the Enhanced Medicaid.
The Cortland Legislature recently released a statement with strong opposition to Governor Hochul’s recent proposal for the state to retain eFMAP funding from the federal government, which is intended to be distributed to counties and not to the state.
The proposal would have counties throughout the state spend nearly $280 million more dollars in SFY 2024. The current proposal by the state is to keep the federal savings going forward and to use them to cover further expansions of Medicaid eligibility and benefits and to increase payments to healthcare providers.
The additional cost for Cortland County (taxpayers) would add an unbudgeted cost of an amount over $700,000 dollars for the remainder of this year.
Back in 2014, New York began to share federal ACA savings directly with counties across the state. The savings for the year were provided by lowering weekly payments each county made to the state to support the state’s Medicaid program. The state is currently behind in reconciliation and distribution of funds owed to the county totaling nearly $2 million dollars through 2020.
Cortland County also disagrees with the proposed legislation to cut county funding to the proposed extent when Hochul’s budget proposes to fully fund its own reserves two years ahead of schedule and also project the state’s general fund to have a surplus of $35 billion dollars already.
The county has requested that the state reconcile the amount owed of almost $2 million dollars through 2020, and reconcile and pay the amounts owed through 2022.
