State officials are fending off a legal challenge that could delay the planned revamp of a popular Medicaid-funded home care program that is slated to begin next week.
The Health Department has rejected legal claims that it rigged a bidding process to select the Georgia-based financial services firm Public Partnerships LLC to take over the $9 billion Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program – a move that is slated to shutter hundreds of home care companies known as fiscal intermediaries in the coming months.
Freedom Care, the state’s largest fiscal intermediary which lost the bid to take over CDPAP, filed a lawsuit in November alleging that the state conducted a “sham bidding process,” colluding with PPL to award the contract before a formal procurement process took off. Those claims were supported by the testimony of Carlos Martinez, CEO and executive director of the fiscal intermediary Bridges in Rockland County, who said that a state official said over a Zoom call in April that PPL would get the contract, two months before the state issued a request for proposals.
The state rejected claims that it rigged the bidding process last week, saying in legal filings that Freedom Care’s allegations are “meritless.” New York’s Medicaid Director Amir Bassiri said in an affidavit that the state had no communication with PPL from the time it submitted its bid in August until the contract was awarded in September.
“I am unaware of any attempts by PPL to influence the procurement during the restricted period and any such attempts would likely be brought to my attention given my role as the Medicaid Director,” Bassiri said in the filing.
Maria Perrin, president and chief strategy officer at PPL, also said in legal filings that the company was not informed that it would receive the contract until the award was announced on Sept. 27.
“The state can deny, deny, deny all it wants, but it has no response to the smoking gun evidence of bid-rigging we submitted to the court,” said Akiva Shapiro, an attorney with Gibson Dunn that represents Freedom Care.
The state’s attempts to fend off legal challenges come as health officials prepare to begin a widespread home care consolidation on Jan. 6. The state is in the middle of paring down the number of fiscal intermediaries that administer the program from more than 600 to just one by April 1, in hopes of saving the Medicaid program $500 million a year.
New York is facing at least six lawsuits aiming to derail its home care overhaul. But the state is planning to move forward with its consolidation. Starting Monday, PPL is expected to begin registering older New Yorkers and people with disabilities who receive care through CDPAP on its platform, Perrin said in legal filings. It will start issuing paychecks to home health aides on March 1.
