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In today’s CapCon:
New York’s mental health and substance use providers are under immense strain. Here’s how the state could provide relief, according to stakeholders.
Primary Day Preview: Here are five more races to watch in the state Senate and Assembly, including some in Queens and Brooklyn.
A former high-ranking state official has agreed to pay a fine as part of a settlement with New York’s ethics agency and inspector general’s office.
Names in today’s CapCon: Jihoon Kim, Kathy Hochul, Rajiv Rao, Sandra L. Beattie, Steven Raga, Mike Gianaris, Jumaane Williams, Donovan Richards, Zohran Mamdani, Aber Kawas, Kristen Gonzalez, Emily Gallagher, Claire Valdez, Bernie Sanders, Yuh-Line Niou, Phoebe Sheehan, Grace Lee, Brian Kavanagh, Letitia James, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Mark Levine, Brad Lander, Jenifer Rajkumar, Eric Adams, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, Carl E. Heastie, David Orkin, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jessica Ramos, Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, Andrew Cuomo, Jose Peralta, Hiram Monserrate, Stefani Zinerman, Eon Huntley, Jabari Brisport, Michael Bailey
(Will Waldron/Times Union)
🧠 How New York could improve access to mental health and substance use care
There was a lot of attention paid at the Capitol this year to health care in New York, including the hundreds of thousands of Essential Plan enrollees who will soon have to find new insurance.
But there wasn’t as much of a focus on state investments into the mental health care sector, which stakeholders say is strained amid an overwhelming demand for services that can’t be met by the current workforce.
“We recognize that it’s easy to blame the service providers for not being able to keep up with the demand but we really want to peel back the layers to show why that’s the case,” said Jihoon Kim, president and CEO of InUnity Alliance, a behavioral health trade and advocacy group.
One of those layers is the thousands of hours that providers of mental health and substance use services spend on administrative tasks that aren’t factored into the rates they’re paid by health insurers, including Medicaid.
That’s what a lot of the challenges faced by those providers come down to: money, or lack thereof.
That’s not new information. But it’s more complicated than reimbursement rates that don’t cover operating costs for those providers, many of which are nonprofits.
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