[NYAPRS Enews] Times Union Editorial Backs Mental Health Workforce Healthcare Enhancements

[Harvey Rosenthal]

NYAPRS Note: The following clip comes from NYAPRS' Policy Specialist
Matt Canuteson, who writes that "the push for healthcare enhancements
will be a part of the workforce state advocacy agenda that will be
advanced at this years January 29th NYAPRS Albany Legislative Day."
E-mail him at mattc at nyaprs.org for more details. Great thanks to Glenn
Liebman's and MHANYS' leadership on this issue. 

 

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=O
PINION&newsdate=1/6/2008 

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