A landmark settlement approved last month is forcing New York state to overhaul its Medicaid mental health services for children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The settlement stems from C.K. v. McDonald, a federal class action lawsuit filed in 2022 alleging the state Departments of Health and Mental Health failed to provide legally required, community-based care for children, forcing some into harmful situations or leaving them without help altogether.<\/p>\n
One plaintiff, Christina Hauptman, recently spoke publicly for the first time about her family’s experience.<\/p>\n
“While on waitlist, he had his first suicide attempt,” Hauptman said of her child. “We were representing the hundreds of thousands of children that were not getting their mental health services to stay home in the community.”<\/p>\n
A study by the Healthy Minds Healthy Kids campaign found that only one in four children covered by Medicaid in New York are receiving the mental health care they need.<\/p>\n
Under the settlement, New York agreed to improve mental health services for children and youth in its Medicaid program. But the deal includes an 18-month planning period followed by additional time for implementation, a timeline that concerns advocates and families.<\/p>\n
“We can’t tell our children to wait,” Hauptman said. “We can’t be like, ‘can you just hold off two years before you have another suicide attempt because the state is redesigning the system right now?””<\/p>\n
The Healthy Minds Healthy Kids campaign is now proposing a $200 million investment in the state budget to increase access to outpatient services and reform Medicaid reimbursement rates. The group also says New York’s youth mental health workforce needs nearly 6,300 additional workers to meet current demand.<\/p>\n
Advocates rallied at the state Capitol on Monday and visited lawmakers’ offices directly after Gov. Kathy Hochul did not include the $200 million investment in her executive budget proposal. The group is now asking state senators and Assemblymembers to include the funding in their own budget proposals.<\/p>\n
Republican state Assemblyman Scott Gray, of the 116th District, who met with the group, said the state has a pattern of delay.<\/p>\n
“The state has a tendency to look at and say, ‘We’re dealing with it, it’s going through a redesign and implementation phase, so we will get to it,'” Gray said. “They have a tendency to prolong some of these implementations instead of taking a look instead of dealing with it right now.”<\/p>\n
Assemblymember Angelo Santabarbara, a Democrat, also met with advocates. He has been a vocal supporter of expanding youth mental health services, the group said.<\/p>\n
Other families shared their experiences at the rally. Emmi Murdi, a 10-year-old advocate, said she “was pushed out of school because of behavioral health challenges in kindergarten.”<\/p>\n
Bethany Morgan, a mother and advocate, said her daughter “was not able to go to prom or graduate from high school” due to inadequate support.<\/p>\n
Brad Hansen, an advocate with the campaign, called on the state to act faster than the settlement requires.<\/p>\n
“We want to see that state take action sooner than that,” Hansen said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A landmark settlement approved last month is forcing New York state to overhaul its Medicaid mental health services…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[206,2952,116,2953,4429,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,55619,112,87],"class_list":{"0":"post-129184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-albany-capital-region","9":"tag-app-health","10":"tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-news","16":"tag-new-york-state","17":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","18":"tag-new-york-state-news","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-noah-love","21":"tag-ny-state-of-politics","22":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}