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February 7, 2006
GOVERNOR PATAKI VETOES LEGISLATION TO COVER MEDICATIONS FOR DUAL ELIGIBLES: On Friday, Governor Pataki vetoed legislation (A.9462 / S.6410) that would have provided a safety net for dual eligible individuals attempting to get their medications under the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. Last week, in calling for people to contact the Governor in support of this legislation, we incorrectly noted that this legislation would cover the co-pays that many dual eligibles are having extreme difficulty in paying in order to access their medications. Instead, this bill would essentially have extended Medicaid coverage for medications denied by a Medicare Part D plan until the difficulties with the new drug plans were ironed out. On Monday night, the Assembly moved to override the Governor’s veto by a vote of 141-0. Now, it is up to the Senate to act on this measure. We encourage everyone to contact their Senator to urge them to override the Governor’s veto of (A.9462 / S.6410). If you don’t know who your Senator is, go to http://nymap.elections.state.ny.us/nysboe/. Call (518) 455-2800 and asked to be connected with your Senator’s office.Tell them:"I'm a registered voter from (your locality) urging you to override the Governor's veto of A9462/S6410 to make sure no one's health is threatened by the Medicare Part D mess!"
MEDICARE PART D TRANSITION PERIOD EXTENDED: Last week also brought with it the announcement from HHS and CMS that the transition period under the new drug benefit will be extended from the original 30 days time period to 90 days. Included as a safeguard to ensure that people were not simply denied medications just after enrolling in a new program, this extension will continue to require plans to cover medications that are not necessarily on their formulary, providing beneficiaries more time to get their medication changed, get an exemption from the plan, or change the plan in which they are enrolled.
FEDERAL BUDGET RECONCILIATION VOTE: Last week, the US House of Representatives approved a budget package that includes billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts and includes many other damaging cuts to human services, many of which will hurt people living with mental illness. Following below is NMHA’s Capitol Hill Update, which details the vote and the contents. First, is the list of the New York delegation of the House of Representatives and how they voted: Yea
Nay
NMHA
Capitol Hill Update
IN THE NEWS: Albany
Weighs Confinement of Sex Offenders After Prison Term. By
Jennifer Medina ALBANY, Feb. 4 — In the legal combat against sex offenders, local and state governments have done everything from using global tracking systems and banning released offenders from local parks to stopping them from working on ice cream trucks. Now, New York is preparing to go a big step further, with lawmakers passing bills that would allow for the civil commitment of some sex offenders after they are released from prison. And in his budget, Gov. George E. Pataki included a $130 million plan to raze a prison north of Binghamton and replace it with a compound to house up to 500 sex offenders who have already served their sentences. More than a dozen other states have enacted civil commitment laws, which have been upheld by the United States Supreme Court. Prosecutors and politicians have pressed for the measures, saying that they are the only way to protect potentially hundreds of other victims. But opponents say state officials are headed down the path of the Rockefeller drug laws, creating strict penalties that will do little to deter crime and will eventually be repealed. "We seem be making these decisions on fear rather than on fact," said Harvey Rosenthal, the executive director of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services. "We don't have a clear idea of what treatment works, and what doesn't. We don't know what kind of real solution this will bring. We're moving feverishly in a way that will require all kinds of revisions later." Last year, the governor quietly began using existing mental health laws to keep sex offenders in an institution once they were released from prison. In November, a State Supreme Court justice ruled the procedure illegal, but the governor appealed the decision. The case is expected to go to the state's highest court later this year. Over the last several months, 39 men have been placed at Manhattan Psychiatric Center, Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Wards Island and Central New York Forensic Psychiatric Center in Marcy, northwest of Utica. The governor's budget proposal anticipates placing nearly 200 more sex offenders in central New York and in St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center this year. The program is expected to cost $27 million this year, with an additional $35 million allocated for renovations at the complexes. Unlike other criminal legislation, civil confinement laws are not meant to deter or punish. But proponents of the practice say that sex offenders are likely to commit the same kinds of crimes again after their release from prison, and that keeping them in custody is the only way to assure public safety. Eight percent of all convicted sex offenders in New York are arrested within eight years of being released, according to the state's Division of Criminal Justice Services. "I think you begin with the fundamental question of do we allow sexually violent predators back into our community?" said Chauncey G. Parker, the governor's criminal justice adviser. "If there are reasonable steps to take, we need to take those steps. What do you do with somebody who is about to walk out of prison into a community and this person is going to molest and going to rape again?" But in Washington State, a study by the independent research office of the Legislature showed that felony-level sex offenders had a recidivism rate of 2.7 percent — lower than the rate of repeat arrests for felony-level drug violations and several other categories of crime. Although the number of sex crimes has remained stable within the last several years, lawmakers in New York State are under intense public pressure to approve the legislation. In recent months, several high-profile incidents — including one in which a woman was killed by a sex offender in the parking lot of a White Plains mall — have prompted renewed calls for strict penalties. The New York State District Attorneys Association endorsed the Senate's civil confinement proposal last year. Jeanine F. Pirro, the former Westchester district attorney who is now running for attorney general, has repeatedly made pleas to create such a system. Last month, the New York City Bar published a policy paper stating that sex offender civil commitment laws could easily be abused and that "misplaced fears" could keep sex offenders incarcerated for years after their sentence and could represent a threat to civil liberties. Members of the Senate and the Assembly will begin to meet on Monday to debate how the state might determine who would be placed under civil confinement. Some legislators are pressing for a larger role for mental health experts, but advocates for the mentally ill have expressed wariness of how the experts would determine the criteria used to make such decisions and say the offenders would wrongly be grouped with the mentally ill. In 2002, the United States Supreme Court refined its earlier ruling, deciding that people who were "unable to control their dangerousness" and were likely to commit another sex crime could be civilly committed. Mental health advocates and experts say that only 6 percent of sex offenders have a diagnosed mental illness, and are more akin to an alcoholic or someone suffering from a compulsive disorder. Mental health advocates say they are also worried that civil confinement programs paid through the state's Office of Mental Health may soon divert money from mental health patients. "Equating sex offenders with mental illness in the public eye puts us back many, many years," said Michael Seereiter, the public policy director for the Mental Health Association of New York State. "For all the money that they might put out for housing sex offenders, it is the same funds that we can use on treatment and preventative services." Dale M. Volker, a Republican from Western New York who is sponsoring the civil confinement bill in the Senate, said the state should focus on creating a system that would keep some sex offenders confined, but also provide intensive treatment. "If they can't be treated and they are dangerous, you have got to come to grips with the fact they should be put away," he said. "We have to deal with the issue that maybe we can't do anything with these people."
Predator
plan has doubters. By Rick Karlin Pataki proposal to confine sexual offenders raises concerns about worker safety ALBANY -- With chronic understaffing and employees working mandatory double shifts, workers in psychiatric hospitals say their ranks are already thinly stretched at a time when Gov. George Pataki wants them to help oversee hundreds of sexual predators freshly released from prison. "It's pretty nasty sometimes," said Ricky Fernandez, a registered nurse at Capital District Psychiatric Center. In 8 years at the hospital, he has suffered two serious assaults, he said, including one that resulted in a broken nose and another in which he sustained bruised ribs when an enraged patient lifted him up, dropped him from about 5 feet, and leaped on top of him. Fernandez' union, the Public Employees Federation, is pushing for laws that would force the state Office of Mental Health, which runs CDPC, and other public employers to institute protective measures. He spoke about his assaults while making a DVD about workplace violence that PEF plans to hand out to lawmakers. Observers also are asking if OMH, struggling to protect the workers it now has, will be able to ensure the safety of people who will watch over the 600 high-risk sexual predators who, under Pataki's civil confinement plan, would be kept in new facilities operated largely by the mental health agency. Worker safety is the latest concern to surface with Pataki's plan to convert Camp Pharsalia, a minimum security prison in Chenango County, into an institution for 500 sex offenders. Others would be housed in psychiatric centers in New York City, central New York, Rochester and Ogdensburg, St. Lawrence County. They would be overseen largely by OMH staff members. Pataki's plan was initially hailed by many Republicans as a solid law-and-order move to protect the public from sex predators. Republican attorney general candidate Jeanine Pirro has also called for such a policy, known as civil confinement. Not everyone is convinced, though. Mental health advocates have objected for a number of reasons. Some fear civil confinement would drain resources from existing psychiatric hospitals. Others say sex predators should fall under the purview of the prison system. And OMH workers say they are already getting patients who are more difficult to deal with, while at the same time staff shortages are forcing employees like Fernandez to frequently do double shifts. "We're not looking to attack OMH. We feel it's been improperly downsized," said Jonathan Rosen, PEF's director of occupational safety and health. PEF officials point out that OMH has budgeted for about 17,000 employees -- compared to more than 19,000 in 1999. OMH officials say they are confident workers will get the support they need to run Camp Pharsalia. "The program proposed for Camp Pharsalia will be a completely secure state-of-the-art facility, and its use of best practices will make it a model for other facilities around the country," said OMH spokeswoman Jill Daniels. Still, some lawmakers also note that by 2009, Pataki's plan would put more sexual predators in civil confinement in New York than Texas, which has had civil confinement for years. "It took Texas five years to reach a population of 400 individuals," said Peter Rivera, D-Bronx, who heads the Assembly's mental health committee. "We anticipate being able to reach 650 in four years," he said, adding he's not sure if the state could realistically deal with that number in such a short period. "I think the jury is still out on what these institutions are eventually going to look like," added Rivera, who noted that correctional officers and other workers are likely to be a part of the program too. The governor proposes hiring 441 OMH employees for the civil confinement plan. Union members say they welcome the additional work. "It will create jobs and (pay) upgrades," said Steve Madarasz, of the Civil Service Employees Association, which is pushing its own set of workplace safety laws as well. But without legislation, safety improvements are unlikely to occur, they add. The safety issue is just one aspect of what is likely to become a multilayered debate over how to put a civil confinement program in place. "This is a political hot potato," said David Seay, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness' New York affiliate, which represents families of the mentally ill and contends the issue of sexual predators is separate from other mental health issues. "These people have become the lepers of the 21st century and we put them in the psychiatric hospitals because there is no other place to put them."
Sex
predators in CNY. By Marnie Eisenstadt People don't end up in Pharsalia by accident. The Chenango County town, where some of the main roads are still unpaved, is 15 miles from the nearest grocery store, bank or doctor. Most of the people who live there do so because their parents did, as did their parents' parents. But Gov. George Pataki's 2006 budget has put the community of 600 people on the map. He has a $130 million plan to house 500 of the state's most dangerous sexual predators in Pharsalia. The state would level Camp Pharsalia, a minimum security prison camp with 144 inmates and 91 employees bounded by state forest, homes and farms. There are no high prison fences or armed guards in towers. Inmates can walk away, and have. It would be replaced by a civil confinement center, which if approved by the state Legislature would open in 2009. Unlike the campus of brown and green cabins that looks more like a park than a prison, the new facility would have fences one 8 feet high with an electric motion sensor, the other 16 feet high with razor ribbon. The yard would always be lit, and there would be 24-hour video surveillance, according to the state Office of Mental Health, which would run the center. The sex offenders housed at Pharsalia would receive intensive treatment provided by licensed professionals, said Jill Daniels, an Office of Mental Health spokeswoman. The center is Pataki's answer to a growing concern about sexual predators that has local and state governments across the country struggling to make their residents feel safer. States passed 160 laws dealing with sex offenders in 2005, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. If New York's civil confinement center is approved, it would join 16 other states with civil confinement laws. At least six have dedicated confinement centers like the one proposed in New York. Dennis Brown, Pharsalia's town supervisor, said he was shocked to hear that the state wanted to put the sex offenders in his town. He learned about the plan the morning it was announced, after the chairman of the Chenango County Legislature got a call from the state. But on another level, Brown wasn't surprised. His town has a history of being a good place to put things nobody wants. In the 1990s, Pharsalia was on the state's short list for a low-level nuclear waste dump. The state abandoned that plan. In 1996, it was Chenango County that wanted to use Pharsalia as a dumping ground. That time, it was for a landfill, and the county was successful. The town is paid $4 for each ton of trash dumped there. The town would receive no direct payment if the civil confinement center is built there. But the center would create 1,000 new jobs, each with a minimum salary of $40,000. "Putting them here is kind of a two-edged sword," Brown said as he sat in the spare office of his wood pallet-making business. "You're talking about 1,000 jobs. Chenango County could use 1,000 jobs . . . "The other side of the sword is how do you live with it? I mean, how do you live with it?" he said, emphasizing every word. Legislature must act Pataki's plan is far from a sure thing. The money for the center still has to be approved. It is projected to cost $130 million to build, plus $200,000 per bed annually. The state Legislature has yet to pass a law allowing civil confinement of sexual predators, although it appears likely this session. The Senate and Assembly have agreed on different versions of the law. Both would require that offenders leaving prison be committed to civil confinement only after hearings and a trial. Since September, the governor has taken matters into his own hands, using an executive order to commit dangerous sex offenders. So far, 41 have been committed after their prison terms ended. That action is the subject of a lawsuit, and others will likely follow if the civil confinement law passes. Brown wonders how it can be legal to keep people locked up after they have served their time. "If a guy has been arrested, convicted and sentenced, put in a prison and served his time ... and you say, 'No, you can't go home,' I mean, somehow that's going to become an issue at some point," he said. Does it work? People who treat sex offenders question the usefulness of civil confinement. Kenneth Lau, president of the New York State Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, said he isn't necessarily opposed to civil confinement of sexually violent offenders, but he believes the governor's plan is premature. "We caution that whatever is being put into place it's not a knee-jerk reaction," said Lau, who runs a sex offender treatment center in Westchester County. His group and the New York State Alliance of Sex Offender Service Providers are concerned that civil confinement has not been proven to be effective. Many states have struggled with the costs, which continue to increase as more people are committed and very few are released. Dr. Fred Berlin, who started one of the country's first sex offender treatment centers 25 years ago at Johns Hopkins University, said the discussions about civil confinement haven't been honest ones. He said if the point is to keep truly dangerous people away from society, rather than to rehabilitate them, then states should be honest about that. Civil confinement laws cast the practice as a way for offenders to receive treatment, because legally they must, but most are just a cover for lifetime imprisonment, Berlin said. "As a society, I think we ought to say that and discuss how we balance safety with civil rights," said Berlin, a psychiatrist. He said the most high-profile sex offenders - those who kidnap, rape and murder - should never be released back into society, but they are a very small percentage of offenders. Recidivism rates for sex offenders are lower than they are for people who commit other types of crimes, he said. Berlin said he favors strong laws and sentences for sex offenders, but also enough treatment to help them control their urges. That means more treatment in prison, more when they leave prison, and, perhaps most importantly, more to help would-be sex offenders before they act. But Laura Ahearn, executive director of Parents for Megan's Law in Stony Brook, said civil confinement is the way to go. "The idea is that we want to make community safety a priority," she said. "We don't want sex offenders walking around in the community, and they are." 'A hundred questions' If anyone in Pharsalia wants to organize opposition to Pataki's plan, he won't have an easy time of it, said Christine Barnhart, owner of the town's only bar, The Balsam Inn. The few people who live in the town are spread over 25,000 acres. Barnhart remembers when the nuclear waste dump was looming. Then, people did get together to oppose it. "It takes something big like that," she said. The civil confinement center doesn't seem to rise to that level, perhaps because of the jobs it would bring. As he finished his lunch at the bar, town resident Barry Stevens weighed in. "People there now might attract a worse type of people," he said, referring to the current population at Camp Pharsalia. Some of the family and friends of the minimum security inmates cause trouble at the bar and other places around town, he said. Stevens thought the sex offenders might not have any visitors at all. "I don't see it as any worse," he said. But Theresa Willard does. She and her husband, Steve, bought their trailer home and 23 acres of land up the road from Camp Pharsalia five years ago. Now she's thinking about selling. Even though 1,000 jobs sounds good and she knows the sex offenders have to go somewhere, all thoughts about the place end the same way: "We don't like it." She worries about her nine grandchildren. "Maybe we'll get it stopped," she said. At the very least, Brown said, people want more information. They want to know how tight security would be and what would happen if someone got out. "We have a hundred questions," he said.
Civil
confinement is a temporary solution. Editorial Governor Pataki's plan to use vacant space in psychiatric centers around the state as temporary holding stations for the most dangerous sex offenders has some flaws. But it sure beats the alternative of letting the offenders back into the community. New York is home to more than 22,000 sex offenders of all levels. About 2,000 of them are Level 3 offenders, those deemed at the highest risk of repeating their crimes. That's a polite way of saying that prison did not cure their perverse compulsions and the community is their hunting ground. That's where civil confinement comes in, for the Level 3 sex offenders who pose the most threat to the public. No one is pleased with the idea of sex offenders clumped in one place, but that's better than having them on the streets. Some protest civil confinement, touting the offenders' rights, but pedophiles and rapists have broken their contract with society as well as the law. The rights and safety of law-abiding, decent people must come first. Still, any civil confinement proposal must be limited to the most serious offenders, the confinement must be determined in a public process and releases should be considered based on psychiatric evaluations and treatments. Civil confinement should be considered a temporary situation, as Pataki suggests. Six times the governor proposed laws modeled after those in 16 other states in accordance with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, with the support of the Republican-controlled Senate but not the Democrat-controlled Assembly. Democrats have their own version. Under Pataki's plan, space at five state psychiatric centers would be used for civil confinement, with sex offenders kept away from the regular patients. Some mental health advocates are calling this plan a misuse of the mental health system. They complain that there's already a long waiting list for bed space at the institutions. That's a valid point. Mental illness is not a crime, and these people should get the help they need. The civil confinement sites collectively can hold up to 623 offenders until a secure 500-bed site is built and opened in 2009 at Camp Pharsalia in Chenango County. The budget for creating the temporary sites is $35 million, with an additional $27 million needed for staffing and operations next year. The bill for the permanent site is estimated at $130 million. It's expensive, but allowing the predators to create more victims is unthinkable.
Mentally
ill shaken by new Medicare plan. By Susan Levine Some prescription denials have heightened distress Even among the incident reports crossing Craig Knoll's desk weekly now, this one stood out: A 43-year-old client of Knoll's mental health agency, a man who suffers from bipolar disorder, had come from his pharmacy frustrated to the point of meltdown. There were snags in his new Medicare drug plan. Of his four medicines, it would fill only two. "I'm not going to take any of them anymore," he yelled, according to the report by caseworkers. Before they could do anything, he grabbed the prescription bottles he'd just gotten, ran for the restroom and dumped both in the toilet. "He flushed everything he had on hand," recounted Knoll, executive director of Threshold Services in Silver Spring, whose staff spent day after day last month grappling with the many ramifications of the government's troubled program. Threshold came to the rescue of clients who couldn't get any medications or who, despite their pills, were in increasing distress because of all the confusion. It reimbursed several who'd mistakenly paid hundreds of dollars for pills that should have cost them a few dollars -- and replenished the supply of the client who had thrown his away. "I'm not saying it's the federal government's fault he flushed his meds," Knoll said. "I'm saying it's the federal government's fault he couldn't get his meds. It's not surprising that people with mental illness respond in ways that people with mental illness respond." Since the prescription program made its debut Jan. 1, some of the estimated 2 million mentally ill Americans covered because they receive both Medicare and Medicaid have gone without the drugs that keep their delusions, paranoia, anxieties or stress in check. Mental health service providers and advocacy organizations nationwide say they worry that scores are at high risk of relapse. Numerous people have been hospitalized. "The continuation of medications is absolutely critical to keep them in community living," said Steven S. Sharfstein, chief executive of the Shepherd-Pratt Health System in Baltimore and president of the American Psychiatric Association. Last week, the association joined other mental health groups in a lengthy talk with Medicare officials about the myriad problems. 'We could have an epidemic' "I really don't know what the future will bring. . . . I have a very deep concern that psychiatric patients will suffer disproportionately," Sharfstein said. "If by the end of February or March, if [federal officials] haven't figured this out, we could have an epidemic on our hands." The mentally ill are nearly a third of the "dual eligibles" who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid because of income and disability or age. Mark B. McClellan, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told a Senate committee hearing Thursday that a prime focus is resolving the "remaining transition issues" for this extremely vulnerable population. That will not happen quickly. Like other Medicare-Medicaid recipients, the mentally ill were to have been signed up automatically for Part D at the start of the year, with responsibility for their prescriptions shifted seamlessly to private drug plans. Clinicians expected a bumpy beginning even in the best of circumstances. The new coverage often forces beneficiaries to switch from their usual pharmacies to different locations and strange faces, changes that Pam Cudahy of St. Luke's House in Bethesda said can have a huge effect on someone with few coping resources. "Is the environment familiar? Is the person [behind the counter] familiar? When I show my prescription card, will the same thing happen as happened before?" Such questions represent daunting challenges, explained Cudahy, whose agency provides crisis care and psychiatric rehabilitation to about 1,000 teenagers and adults. "You don't want something to happen they're not expecting." But repeatedly, she and others say, people have fallen through the program's cracks and discovered they have no insurance -- and have either run out of pills or rationed their medicine because they feared they would be left without. Or they have been assigned to plans that will pay for some but not all of their psychiatric prescriptions -- an untenable and potentially dangerous situation given the complicated multiplicity of drugs people often take, with some pills to treat symptoms and others to counteract side effects. Unlike many medicines, psychiatric drugs are not easily substituted. High cost of program In Alexandria last month, a mother of two with a history of homelessness and attempted suicide left a drugstore empty-handed after being told her antidepressant was not covered. "For her, it was overwhelming," said Lix Wixson, director of acute care at the local Community Services Board. "She shut down." The agency bought her a week's supply of Lexapro while it changed her plan and stabilized her condition. In fact, it made repeated purchases for clients in January at a cost exceeding $2,400. That's money unlikely to be reimbursed. "We can't do that indefinitely," Wixson said. St. Luke's House turned to Montgomery County's mental health prescription contract for assistance. At one point, the organization was counseling 15 people with disabling illnesses, Part D errors and dwindling prescriptions. Michelle Ponder of Rockville was among them, and she admits she was scared as she counted down her pills. Her daily dosage includes Lamictal, a finely tuned mood stabilizer; Seroquel, which is used for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder; and Lithobid, a controlled form of lithium. Together, the three keep her out of the hospital, she believes. Her housemate, Geraldine Champa, came close, too. More than a week into 2006, she was down to only two of the orange tablets that minimize the extreme mood swings and panic attacks that otherwise derail her life. With medication, she can manage much like the next person, with a part-time job and her own independence. Without it, she starts to lose control. The upset returns, and the anger. She has more and more difficulty dealing with others. "You can't skip a day," she explained recently, as Ponder and several others at St. Luke's nodded their understanding. Yet even months of well-informed guidance and planning are no guarantee. "It still crumbles in front of you," said a tired Cherie Sammis, clinical director of the Perry Family Health Center in Northwest, although the calls that have been waking her at 5:30 a.m., interrupting her at work and continuing late into the night have come not from center patients but from family halfway across the country. Sammis's younger sister struggles with manic depression and schizophrenia. As her fears about her Medicare prescription coverage spiraled -- fears borne out by repeated computer glitches and plan inconsistencies -- she deteriorated precipitously. Recently, she told Sammis long-distance: " 'I've hurt myself before. . . . I'll hurt myself again. I've got to save my life.' "
Pataki
rejects bill prompted by Medicare problems. ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) _ Gov. George Pataki said Friday he was vetoing a bill that would have indefinitely given New Yorkers access to medications if they are denied coverage under the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. Pataki said the bill passed by the Republican-led Senate and Democrat-controlled Assembly wasn't necessary because the U.S. Health and Human Services Department agreed to reimburse the state through March 8 for the cost of giving prescriptions to seniors having trouble with the new plan. Pataki, a Republican, enacted a temporary measure Jan. 13 directing the state Health Department to allow access to the drugs for seniors eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. The legislation would have permanently extended the measure until problems with the Medicare benefit that launched Jan. 1 were completely resolved. State Sen. Kemp Hannon, chairman of the Health Committee and a sponsor of the bill, said he was disappointed by the governor's move. "No eligible senior should have to worry or fear that they will be denied coverage for prescription medications they need to stay healthy and active," Hannon said. "I will be studying all steps that the Legislature can take in the wake of the governor's veto to make sure that this promise to our seniors is kept." Pataki said pharmacists must try to access the Medicare benefit from Feb. 16 to March 8. If access is denied, the state will continue to pay for the coverage and receive reimbursement from the federal government. After March 8, the state Health Department will monitor the effects of reverting back to Medicare Part D. The timeline shows that both the state and federal government want to establish a deadline for bringing those who have had problems into the new plan. Pataki did not specify what would happen to seniors still experiencing problems or extra costs with the program after March 8, though he promised to take additional steps if necessary. "The veto is a slap in the face to tens of thousands of senior citizens who have fallen through the cracks of Part D through no fault of their own," said Democratic Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, a sponsor of the legislation. "The governor thinks if Medicare is going to stop reimbursing the state, then he's prepared to let low-income senior citizens go without their medication. I think the state has a responsibility to step in rather than to let that happen." The bill would have kept the safety net in place until the state health commissioner declared the confusion surrounding implementation of Part D over. Assembly
overrides veto. By James M. Odato ALBANY -- The Democrat-led Assembly on Monday voted unanimously to override Gov. George Pataki's veto of a bill to extend coverage for medications while problems with a new Medicare program are worked out. The 141-0 Assembly vote, in which GOP members sided against the Republican governor, puts the ball in the Senate's court. Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno said he will recommend an override when Republicans meet privately today. The 141-0 Assembly vote, in which GOP members sided against the Republican governor, puts the ball in the Senate's court. Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno said he will recommend an override when Republicans meet privately today. On Friday, Pataki vetoed the Legislature's plan to make sure seniors affected by the switch to Medicare D would get prescription coverage, something that wasn't happening in many cases because of transition problems for those also eligible for Medicaid. Pataki's act affected about 600,000 people. The governor said he and the federal government had worked out a plan to make sure prescriptions were filled, with the state picking up the cost if necessary, at least through March 8. But legislators, mindful of their standing with elderly voters in an election year, had pushed the bill as a way to give poor, elderly people some certainty about being able to afford their medications. The bill's Senate sponsor and Health Committee chairman, Kemp Hannon, said he was disappointed by Pataki's act and promised to take steps to insure the coverage. Minority Leader David Paterson challenged his colleagues to override, noting that Pataki's veto, coming at 5:30 on a Friday while the governor was "off campaigning in Iowa only adds insult to the injury he's inflicted." Pataki spokesman Kevin Quinn did not have an immediate comment. |
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