January 7, 2008

Health Care Enhancements Editorial

Listed below is an editorial from yesterday’s Albany Times Union on the health care enhancements that MHANYS has been advocating for over the last several months. We are also working with other editorial boards across the state on this issue of providing health care stipends for direct care staff in mental health.

Help the Helpers
Albany Times Union, Editorial
January 6, 2008

Some 31,000 people work in settings throughout New York state providing direct care to those battling mental disorders. They provide an invaluable service to their employers, such as the not-for-profit ClearView Center in Albany, and to the patients they serve, often building bonds of trust that are vital to a prompt recovery.

These workers, like the thousands who provide direct care to patients with physical disabilities, receive low wages that make it difficult, or impossible, to afford decent health coverage for themselves. That itself is a great irony of the nation's health care crisis, of course: The very people who are essential to providing basic health care to others have a hard time affording coverage for themselves.

Their dilemma is reason for the state to provide some assistance to direct care staff to prevent turnover and maintain quality services for patients. In fact, an innovative program of the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities has provided $60 million in health care subsidies for direct care staff at licensed agencies that serve the physically disabled. But no such assistance is available to workers in the mental health field.

The OMRDD subsidies, which work out to about $450 annually for an individual, go a long way toward helping workers in the health care field stay on the job. They also help to fulfill Governor Spitzer's campaign pledge to address the issue of the uninsured. But a subsidy program built on a double standard makes a mockery of such a pledge.

Mr. Spitzer didn't create this inequity, of course. But he has an opportunity to end it by granting a request by the Mental Health Association of New York State to include in his budget a $325 subsidy for individual direct care workers in the mental health field. That works out to about $10 million.

Besides equity, there is another good reason for Mr. Spitzer to include the subsidy in his budget. When the state emptied its mental institutions years ago, it did so with the promise of providing patients with community health care centers. That promise has never been fully kept. In any case, the promise means more than just providing programs and facilities. It means retaining a dedicated staff as well -- by treating them fairly.

THE ISSUE: Mental health workers have a hard time paying for health coverage.

THE STAKES: A double standard on state subsidies sends the wrong message.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=652688&category
=OPINION&newsdate=1/6/2008

MHANYS LEGISLATIVE DAY SET FOR MARCH 12TH, COMMISSIONER HOGAN AMONG THE SPEAKERS

On March 12th, we will be holding our annual legislative day from 9—12. It will be in Meeting Room Five in the concourse. Mental Health Commissioner Michael Hogan has agreed to speak at our event. We will also be inviting several other prominent state officials and legislators to share their perspective on the 2008 Legislative Session. We should have very good timing for the meeting because this will likely be the time that active budget discussions should be under way between the two houses.