Brian Ler on WNYC.

We'll follow up now on something from Governor Hokel's budget address last week.

It's about the challenges New York State faces from the growing cost of Medicaid.

It's an issue because so many New Yorkers lack private health insurance and qualify for the

various parts of Medicaid, which is government health insurance for people with low enough incomes,

for the most part. But as the population ages, that's more and more people and health care costs per each person

keep going up in Medicaid as in the private sector. Medicaid is a big share of the total state

budget. We'll get into specifics. New York also has among the highest per person Medicaid tabs of any

state. The governor says the most of any state.

There are some other ways to look at those numbers, but it's near the top. So we'll get two views on

this. First, though, here's a minute of the governor from that speech. Our Medicaid spending

exceed our projections this year by $1.5 billion.

Let me explain how it happened.

First, 200,000 more people than anticipated remained on state-funded Medicaid after the federal government ended their supplemental pandemic support.

Maintaining the coverage for these previously unenrolled residents now cost the state an additional

$400 million annually. On top of that, to make matters worse, the state is still awaiting repayment of a $1.5

billion one-time bridge loan made to financially distressed hospitals, which actually

are about one-third of the hospitals in the state.

It was all intended to keep them afloat while they're waiting for their federal disbursement.

Helped him out.

We've been left hanging.

Governor Hokel last week and with us now, Bill Hammond, Senior Fellow for Health Policy

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