Legislative Bulletin: Advocacy Day Recap & Next Steps

February 7, 2025

ACTION ALERT: Urge Assemblymembers to Sign On to NEW Nursing Home Medicaid Letter

LeadingAge New York is urging the Legislature to build upon the Executive Budget Proposal’s investments in nursing home Medicaid rates, by increasing Medicaid reimbursement by an additional $460 million (M) (state share) and restoring recent years’ cuts to capital reimbursement. While we are grateful that the Executive has proposed the continuation of last year’s investment and no new cuts, the proposal only adds $50M of new state share funding to nursing homes. Meanwhile, the 10% capital cut enacted last year, and the 5% capital cut enacted in 2020, remain in place, significantly diluting the impact of these modest investments.

Fortunately, Assembly Member Woerner’s office is circulating a letter to Assembly leadership, urging for the Assembly One-House budget to address inadequate nursing home Medicaid reimbursement rates and restore recent cuts to capital reimbursement. Your State Assembly Member has the opportunity to sign on to the letter in support, but it is important for them to do so as soon as possible! Asm. Woerner's office is requesting sign on by noon, Wed., Feb. 12^th. Legislative offices can reach out to Sarah Daly at sdaly@leadingageny.org or call Asm. Woerner’s office (518-455-5404) to be referred to where they can sign on.

Please call your Assembly Member’s Albany office and ask them to sign on to Assemblywoman Woerner’s letter! If you have email contacts with your Assembly office, you can also reach out via email.

Find your assembly member’s contact information here, and call their Albany office phone number as soon as possible!
Call the office and inform them that Assembly Member Woerner is circulating a sign-on for nursing home Medicaid reimbursement to be prioritized in the Assembly one-house budget.

They should reach out to Woerner’s office to sign on: (518) 455-5404.

Explain that the letter is urging for the restoration of harmful cuts to capital reimbursement, and it aims to update nursing home Medicaid rates to reflect current costs of operating.

Take a moment to explain how the capital cut and the underfunding of nursing homes is impacting your organization and the residents and families you serve in the community.
Inform them of how much money your organization is losing daily/annually due to the underfunding of Medicaid (statewide numbers available here).
Additional talking points – nursing home Medicaid reimbursement is broken and needs to be corrected in this year’s budget!

Fourteen nursing homes closed since 2020 alone, almost all of which were nonprofit providers.
Over 70% of New York State nursing homes experienced operating losses in 2022, the most current year for which data is available.
There are far fewer nursing home beds available today than there were in 2019. According to DOH, there are approx. 7,200 unstaffed certified nursing home beds. These are beds that are unavailable due to lack of staff, even though there is demand for them.
Exacerbated delays and gridlock in hospitals and EMS. It was widely reported this summer that New York has the 6th longest ER wait time in the country. This is, in part, due to lack of nursing home capacity.
A federal panel of experts analyzing nursing home Medicaid rates and costs nationwide found that New York’s rates covered on average only 76% of the cost of care (MACPAC, Jan. 2023). This was determined to be one of the worst Medicaid reimbursement rates in the country.
New York’s population is rapidly aging – by 2030, more than 25% of the population will be over the age of 60 in 51 counties across the state, and nearly 70% of those who reach age 65 will need long-term care services at some point in their lives.
We need the State to prioritize the care of our older adults NOW, not next year or the year after. Please sign on to Asm. Woerner’s letter.

Again, Asm. Woerner's office is requesting sign-on by noon, Feb. 12^th. Please reach out to Sarah Daly at sdaly@leadingageny.org with any questions. It is critical that we get as many Assembly Members on the letter as possible!

ACTION ALERT: Two ACF/AL Bills Advance Through Assembly Health Committee

Good news! Two bills that LeadingAge NY strongly supports advanced through the Assembly Health Committee this week.

First, our Role of the Nurse in ACF bill advanced through the Assembly Health Committee! This bill would enable adult care facilities and assisted living settings that employ nurses to have the option to provide nursing services in those settings. The services would be consistent with scope of practice, as well as the admission and retention standards for that particular setting. The bill was approved by the committee, with no votes against, however, there were some memos of opposition in circulation at the committee meeting. Fortunately, our support won out, but the bill was referred to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee where it could face more opposition. We strongly encourage members to contact legislators in support of this bill, as your support will be critical to getting the bill to move out of Assembly Ways and Means and onto the Assembly Floor. Click here to email your state legislators in support of the role of the nurse in ACF!

Additionally, a bill that would authorize physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs) to conduct and sign assisted living program (ALP) medical evaluations has moved through the Health Committee and was advanced to the Assembly Floor Calendar. This means that the bill could be taken up for a vote on the Assembly Floor on any legislative session day over the coming weeks! We encourage members to contact your legislators in support of this bill, as the more noise we make in support, the more likely it is to be called up for a vote on the floor. Click here to email your state legislators in support of streamlining medical evaluations in ALPs!

Please note that these digital letters can be shared with others who might care about these issues, so don’t hesitate to share them with your board members, residents, families, community partners, etc. It takes only a moment to send a letter and it can be personalized as well.

Thank you for all your advocacy at this important time of year! It was great to see some of you in Albany earlier this week pushing for critical investments in the budget process. We will have new budget advocacy letters for ACF/AL available next week, which we also will need your help in amplifying.

Advocacy Day Recap: LeadingAge NY Members Participate in Over 100 Meetings

Thank you to all members and advocates who joined us for our 2025 Advocacy Day in Albany this week! The day was a great success, with over 90 advocates coming together to attend over 100 meetings with state legislators in just one day! We surpassed the number of meetings we had last year, reaching the goals we established earlier this year. We would not have been able to accomplish this without the participation and commitment of our members. Thank you for lending your time, energy and voices to our efforts!

Key legislative offices we met with on Tuesday include Senate Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins, Senate Finance Committee Chair Krueger’s office, Assembly Ways and Means Chair Pretlow’s office, the Chairs of Health, Aging, Housing and Social Services Committees, Health Rankers Jensen and Gallivan, Senate and Assembly central staff teams on health, aging, and housing, and many more offices that are just as critical to our efforts. It was a jam-packed day of meetings to kick-start our budget advocacy.

We saw first-hand how impactful your stories and experiences are with these offices, and having you be a part of this early component of budget advocacy was critical. However, our Advocacy Day is just the beginning of the advocacy work we will need to participate in over the next two months. The Senate and Assembly are expected to put forth their one-house budget proposals sometime in early March. It is vital that we use these next few weeks to keep the pressure on state legislators and urge them to provide better investments in their one-house budget proposals and restore harmful cuts that are already enacted or proposed by the Executive.

Early next week, LeadingAge NY plans to launch a new round of budget advocacy resources, including updated digital advocacy letters for members to use and share with your network of advocates. Additionally, LeadingAge New York’s Advocacy Day website will remain active over the coming weeks. We encourage members to continue to share our Budget Issue Briefs with legislative offices, and, if you haven’t already watched the recording of our Advocacy Day Prep Call, the messaging and focus of our advocacy that we reviewed on the call remain relevant.

Thank you for your budget advocacy, and stay tuned for new resources to come next week!

ACTION ALERT: Continue to Urge Congress to Protect Medicaid in 2025!

Congress is preparing to pass a budget resolution to move forward on tax and spending priorities. Using the budget reconciliation process, Congressional committees of jurisdiction will be instructed to reduce spending on mandatory programs, reauthorize expiring tax cuts, and authorize other spending priorities. Budget reconciliation allows Congress to pass legislation without 60 votes in the Senate, and Medicaid, because of its significant budget and concerns from incoming Congressional leadership about the program’s scope and cost, will be a target for spending cuts in the coming months. Further, New York in particular could be significantly impacted by the changes that are under consideration.

As you know all too well, the Medicaid program is critical to older adults and the providers who serve them. Cuts or changes that impede access to the program must not be part of the budget resolution. Members are strongly encouraged to speak with Congressional offices about the potential consequences of cuts or changes to Medicaid at the Federal level.

LeadingAge New York and National are partnering in organizing some meetings with key targets, but all members are encouraged to engage in phone calls and meetings with Congressional offices! LeadingAge has created two sets of talking points for members and state partners to use in talking to Members of Congress about the potential cuts to Medicaid in the reconciliation process. One set of talking points outlines the types of proposals being considered and provides general talking points on why they are harmful. The second set focuses more on aging services providers as well as the impacts on states.

Digital advocacy options are also available to members, with several different letters that members can send to their members of Congress today, with just a few clicks. Click here to write to your members of Congress TODAY, urging them not to include Medicaid cuts or harmful changes as part of budget reconciliation or other legislation.

Next Public Affairs Council Meeting Scheduled for Feb. 13^th

Members are reminded that LeadingAge NY will be hosting our February Public Affairs Council meeting on Thurs., Feb. 13^th at 3 p.m. During this month’s meeting, the Council will review the latest budget advocacy resources and social media/press activities. We plan to share highlights of our 2025 Advocacy Day that took place on Feb. 4^th, discuss immediate next steps and update members on messaging changes in light of the Executive Budget Proposal.

As has been discussed at previous Public Affairs Council meetings and other forums, the focus of the Council's work changes as we progress through the year and different phases of the state legislative cycle. This February discussion will be focused on 2025 budget advocacy and ensuring that all members understand what they can be doing now to ensure that we have a unified, energetic message urging for the restoration of cuts, increases to critical funding streams and other budget measures that will benefit our nonprofit LTC and aging membership across all service lines. The Public Affairs Council is a prime opportunity for members to weigh in on our materials and strategies, and we use your feedback to refine and capitalize on our work together.

If you have not already done so, you can sign up for the Public Affairs Council here! All Public Affairs Council meetings are held over Zoom. Please reach out to Sarah Daly at sdaly@leadingageny.org with any questions about the Council or PR/advocacy resources.

Nursing Home Temporary Operator Bill Advances to Senate Floor

A piece of legislation that LeadingAge NY successfully opposed last year has been reintroduced in the Senate and advanced to the Senate Floor Calendar earlier this week. The bill, S.1223 (Rivera), would allow the Commissioner of Health to appoint a temporary operator if a nursing facility experiences serious financial instability or conditions that seriously endanger the life, health or safety of residents or patients. However, the legislation would duplicate and likely conflict with existing authorities for temporary operation of nursing facilities and could create a significant disincentive for facilities to seek access to state financial assistance programs to address the effects of inadequate Medicaid rates and rapidly rising costs.

Last year, this bill was passed in the Senate and the Assembly, but we were successful in advocating for the bill’s veto with a letter to the Governor.

The Nursing Home Temporary Operator bill has not yet been reintroduced in the Assembly, but it is already advancing through the Senate. LeadingAge NY has issued our updated memo in opposition to the bill, and we welcome members to call their State Senator to share their opposition.

Contact: Sarah Daly; 518.867.8845; sdaly@leadingageny.org