{"id":539167,"date":"2026-06-17T03:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T03:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/539167\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T03:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T03:22:08","slug":"u-s-sues-n-y-state-over-troubled-11-billion-home-health-care-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/539167\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Sues N.Y. State Over Troubled $11 Billion Home Health Care Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Justice Department on Tuesday sued the New York State Health Department, the state\u2019s Medicaid director and a company whose operation of an $11 billion home health care program<\/a> has faced scrutiny, claiming the state failed to take action against the company\u2019s glaring shortcomings.<\/p>\n

The company, Public Partnerships L.L.C., misled the state regarding its readiness to take over the program, its ability to cut costs and its monthly fees per patient, the suit charges. Federal officials accuse Amir Bassiri, the director of New York State Medicaid, and Dr. James McDonald, the health commissioner, of being aware of its misrepresentations.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, filed in New York\u2019s Eastern District, does not name the state\u2019s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul. And while it makes reference to what it called the \u201csham bid process\u201d by which the company was selected, the suit does not directly charge the state with bid rigging.<\/p>\n

The suit comes as the Department of Justice has increasingly pursued President Trump\u2019s political opponents, including the New York State attorney general, Letitia James. There had long been signs<\/a> that the Trump administration was interested in New York\u2019s Medicaid programs, following revelations of a huge fraud scandal in Minnesota<\/a> in 2025.<\/p>\n

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Ms. Hochul, Kara Cumoletti, called the case \u201canother sad attempt by the Trump administration to weaponize the justice system,\u201d adding, \u201cWe are confident the facts are on our side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meg Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for Public Partnerships, in a statement, denied any wrongdoing and said the company was proud of its work in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe strongly disagree with the characterizations in the complaint and will respond fully through the appropriate legal process,\u201d the statement read, adding that Public Partnerships \u201cwas selected through a transparent, competitive process.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s Consumer Directed Personal Assistant Program, known as CDPAP, uses lay caregivers, including family members, to provide home care to disabled or medically incapacitated Medicaid patients.<\/p>\n

Between 2017 and 2024, enrollment in the program exploded from 12,000 to 250,000, straining the state budget. In response, Ms. Hochul pushed lawmakers to pass legislation that consolidated its management, replacing 700 firms with a single one.<\/p>\n

New York selected Public Partnerships L.L.C., also known as P.P.L., to run the program in 2024. But the transition was troubled from the start.<\/p>\n

Patients complained that care had been disrupted, and workers went unpaid. A hotline to handle the transition was quickly overwhelmed. Public Partnerships blamed the outgoing fiscal intermediaries \u2014 even as the intermediaries sued to stop the transition in court.<\/p>\n

One of those suits directly challenged the bidding process and whether it had been conducted lawfully. In a 2025 decision, the Appellate Division\u2019s First Judicial Department found that the challenger had failed to show that the contracting decision was \u201carbitrary and capricious, affected by an error of law, an abuse of discretion, or done in violation of lawful procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York officials say the move was a success, saving the state over a billion dollars in its first year. \u201cThe fact of the matter is this administration saved CDPAP from a fiscal crisis by removing hundreds of wasteful administrative middlemen,\u201d said Cadence Acquaviva, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health.<\/p>\n

But the Justice Department, in a statement<\/a>, said that Public Partnerships had misrepresented both its cost-cutting intentions and its ability to handle the enormous program, causing \u201csevere disruptions to patient care and harm to patients across the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York\u2019s failure to police a favored vendor that unlawfully siphoned millions of dollars of Medicaid funding is egregious and betrays the public trust,\u201d Brett A. Shumate, an assistant attorney general, said in the statement.<\/p>\n

The company also misled the state regarding \u201cits staffing plan, its financial readiness to perform the contract, the quality of its in-house software and other key aspects of its plan,\u201d according to the suit.<\/p>\n

Most troubling, the Justice Department said, was the \u201cbackroom deal\u201d by which the Health Department awarded the contract.<\/p>\n

James Skoufis, a Democratic state senator, held a hearing last year over his concerns regarding big rigging after it emerged that the state was considering Public Partnerships even before the bill had been passed altering the home health care program.<\/p>\n

In the hearing last August, Mr. Skoufis questioned the company\u2019s vice president, Patty Byrnes, about whether it had had any contact with the state before the law was changed. She denied there had been contact, but later admitted in a letter to Mr. Skoufis that her testimony was inaccurate.<\/p>\n

\u201cP.P.L.\u2019s testimony to the State Senate \u2014 under oath \u2014 was false, and their follow-up \u2018correction\u2019 was intentionally misleading,\u201d Mr. Skoufis said on Tuesday. \u201cWhile I have grave concerns with the ability of Donald Trump\u2019s D.O.J. to impartially prosecute this case, P.P.L. and the Department of Health have a lot of answering to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill Hammond, a health care policy analyst at the conservative-leaning Empire Center for Public Policy, said that the overlap between the Justice Department claims and the revelations of communications between the state and Public Partnerships before the contract was awarded suggested that the case was \u201cnot just a political hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I can\u2019t be sure about,\u201d he added, \u201cis where the precise legal boundaries are and whether they were technically crossed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Justice Department on Tuesday sued the New York State Health Department, the state\u2019s Medicaid director and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[275],"tags":[73953,18,230726,231554,135,475,231555,474,231557,231553,19,17,231558,3920,15416,231556,198525,187],"class_list":["post-539167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-donald-j","tag-eire","tag-federal-state-relations-us","tag-frauds-and-swindling","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-department-nys","tag-healthcare","tag-hochul","tag-home-health-care","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kathleen-c","tag-medicaid","tag-new-york-state","tag-public-partnerships-llc","tag-suits-and-litigation-civil","tag-trump"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116763305360954221","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}