Op Ed - Dear Governor Cuomo Support A9943a Put Families Before Insurance Industry

Dear Governor Cuomo:  

I hope your Father’s Day was wonderful, I am very happy that you are fortunate to still have your own father, a great man indeed.  Unfortunately on Long Island there were thousands of empty chairs at the family table on Father’s Day.  As you know we have been grappling with a youth heroin epidemic for a decade on Long Island and we have buried almost three thousand young people under the age of twenty five due to both opiate pill and heroin overdoses.  Unfortunately now that epidemic is affecting communities in every corner of New York State.

However, I have great news for you – the NYS Senate has created a Heroin Task Force and they have put together some of the brightest minds in the addiction/prevention field and they held eighteen public hearings around this great state.  Those hearings were enormously fruitful and created much-needed dialogues that pinpointed some of the reasons as to why we are failing, why the epidemic is getting worse, not better.   Your Senate put forth an array of very good bills; to deal with what the Center for Disease Control calls an epidemic and national health organizations are saying is the greatest health crisis of our time.  Here on Long Island Boyle and Hannon are rock stars for those of us in The Movement. 

In addition, the heads of the NYS Assembly Insurance Committee and Substance Abuse Committee held a roundtable last week to look at one bill in particular -  A9943a.  You see those of us working to eradicate this epidemic and fight for smart legislation have watched profiteers, insurance companies executives tell young addicts that they must fail at outpatient before they received the proper inpatient treatment for their life-threatening disease.   This has not happened a few times, this has happened hundreds and hundreds of times here on Long Island.  Some have been denied inpatient even after they have overdosed.  Many have gone on to overdose and die and many to go on to commit crimes.  You see Governor it is imperative these decisions be made by those with a background in addiction and they must be made on case by case bases.   We applaud the members of the Assembly who put that roundtable together and to those of us in The Movement, Cusick is also a rockstar.   

However, I have some bad news for you, there are some governmental agencies attempting to remove the most essential elements of A8843a.  Much like their friends in the insurance industry, they playing Russian Roulette with the young people of this state.  The integrity of this bill must remain intact.

Unfortunately, we are just about out of time for these back-room deals, for these unethical practices.  It’s the World Series, bases are loaded, it’s a tie score, there are 3 men on; there are two outs and three balls – we have one shot, one shot to get this right.  This cannot be business as usual, it’s time to forget the pace in which Albany generally runs and do something unprecedented, made bold decisions and reverse the discriminatory practices of the Insurance Industry immediately.   It is incumbent upon all of us to get this right.  Besides the immeasurable human and societal cost, there is a huge cost shift from the profiteers to the tax payers, Medicaid, judiciary and law enforcement costs.  It’s also incumbent from a fiduciary standpoint for the Insurance industry to treat this disease properly from the start.   It is critical that the following aspects of the bill remain intact:

·         Random sample audits of insurers must be made to make sure Insurance companies are using approved tools and appropriate personnel to make Level of Care and Utilization Review determinations. 

·         Determinations using industry-standard, evidence-based tools are in the best interests of the client and the insurer. 

·         The effective date of the bill must remain “as is”. 

·         The expedited appeals process and the commitment to continued coverage regardless of level of care must stay as currently written.  No client should be required to leave treatment while he waits on an appeal. 

·         The requirement for increased surveillance by the Department of Financial Services must remain in the bill as written to keep the insurance companies honest. 

It is time to end the malfeasance.   Thank you kindly for adding one hundred state troopers to address this epidemic, we in the Movement applaud your efforts and are very grateful. 

Best Regards,

Maureen Ledden Rossi

Maureen Ledden Rossi is the Chairman and one of the founding members of Kings Park in the kNOw, a non-profit working to eradicate Long Island’s Youth Opioid/Heroin Epidemic. Rossi is also an award-winning journalist.