By:JOSEPH KELLARD
A guest speaker at a meeting of the Oceanside Civic Association, Weitzman focused on the burden of Medicaid expenses as the top example of these state-imposed mandates within his wider talk about taxes and government management at Middle School on Dec. 8.
The county's Medicaid bill is approximately $300,000 million a year, and goes up on average between 13 to 16 percent annually, with a $40 to $50 million increase projected for 2006.
"That one item, that increase, will outstrip all our revenue increases from every other source," Weitzman said. "...If Medicaid is going up from 13 to 16 percent a year, and inflation is raising all our sales tax revenues 3 or 4 percent every year, then what's the answer?"
Weitzman then asked his audience to raise their hands if they wanted their taxes raised. Not one hand went up.
"We're the highest taxed county in America, so nobody wants more taxes," he said. Weitzman underscored how the state has no control over the Medicaid tax increases, nor over matters such as eligibility, providers or medical bills. To emphasize the magnitude of the problem, he noted that New York pays more in Medicaid than California and Texas combined.
The comptroller discussed the Medicaid issue during a segment of his talk he called "fix Albany," which he said was not as newspapers portray it, with County Executive "getting on a white horse, charging up the New York state throughway and driving into the capital to fix Albany." He said it's about changing the relationship that exists between the state and all of its counties, not just Nassau.
When addressing the question of whether to switch responsibility of Medicaid to the state, Weitzman said, "The state is in worse shape than we [Nassau County] are...So you can't really look to the state to take over the tremendous burden of county taxes," Weitzman said. Instead, Weitzman suggested support for a bill that would cap the amount that the county pays into the program.
Segueing to the related issue of health care, Weitzman explained a program his office initiated in which all Nassau County residents are eligible for a prescription drug discount card, NassauRx. The free card is available to everyone no matter their age or income level, and requires no enrollment forms of fees.
Weitzman said that the more than 90 percent of county pharmacies participating in the program -- including all the major chain stores -- agreed to do so by lowering their prices. According to literature he passed out, residents with an NassauRX card can save an average of 20 percent on almost all prescription medication, and up to 50 percent on generic drugs.
The literature touts the program as coming at no cost to the county, and Weitzman said that in the first four months of this program started in July the county residents saved $1.1 million.
As part of his general talk on the economic state of the county, Weitzman said that before Suozzi was elected three years ago Nassau was rated the worst-run county in the nation and had a $430 million annual deficit with junk for bonds. He said for too long the county had been "running on auto pilot," and "money was going out the door" due to weak managing practices in accounting.
"We're one of the wealthiest counties in America, the wealthiest county in New York state, 15 percent of our residents are millionaires, and we had to go to the upstate farms with incomes that are half of ours to bail out Nassau County," he said. "That's how bad the situation was."
He said today "we find ourselves in a remarkably different situation," wherein the county's bond status has been upgraded three times to an A rating and that, starting in 2002, the county has experienced surpluses and will show another one in 2004. Suozzi and the county legislature, Weitzman continued, used that money to bring down debt, primarily penchant-related debt, to buy police cars and information technology, and to invest the money to hold down future county taxes.
Weitzman primarily attributed these factors to Suozzi's cutting the county work force in 2002 by over 1,000 employees, claiming he saved the county ultimately $100 million a year.
He used the police force as an example, saying that some police officers on the front lines who worked the most amount of overtime earned about $60,000 a year, while a handful of officers whose full-time jobs were to work fax machines were earning an average of $105,000. "That was their job, but that's changing now," he said.
When the issue of cuts to the police force was raised, Weitzman noted that Nassau has one of the lowest per capita crime rates in the nation, and claimed efforts were being made to add more officers to the force.
While the Suozzi administration has eliminated most of the excesses, wasteful practices and abuses, he concluded, things were by no means "hunky-dory" in the county.
"But now were in the same boat as every other county in the state," he said. "And that's like being on the Titanic. The ship is going down, and [Nassau] will be the last one to hit the water. But if there is no ship left we're going to go down with [the other counties]. And this is what 'fix Albany' is all about."
Weitzman will speak at the Island Park Library at 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 16.
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