As they contemplate a major increase in Medicaid spending on home care for the elderly and disabled, state legislators are relying on information that’s outdated, incomplete or inaccurate – and neglecting to think through the predictable consequences.
A proposal known as the Fair Pay for Home Care Act would require that home health and personal care aides be paid at least 50 percent more than the minimum wage for their region – lifting them to a floor of $22.50 an hour in the New York City area and $19.80 upstate.
Although it would cost billions, the measure has broad support in the Legislature, and both houses are pushing to include it in this year’s budget, which is due at the end of this week.
As discussed in a previous post, the debate seems disconnected from key facts about home care in New York.
The program is already extraordinarily large, with levels of spending and employment that are head-and-shoulders above those of every other state, especially in New York City. The state’s expenditures on Medicaid home care more than tripled over the past decade while the state’s over-65 population grew by 30%.
In spite of this flood of funding, supporters of the wage hike portray home care as an industry in crisis, in need of billions more per year to address an “extreme shortage” of workers.
The advocates’ case rests on several claims that don’t square with the available facts:
Claim No. 1: New York faces the biggest shortage of home care workers in the U.S.
This claim is...
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