New York Governor Enriches Union-Boss Cronies 

Phony Medicaid ‘Reform’ Is Actually a Huge Gift to SEIU 1199 

For years now, rapidly growing taxpayer expenditures on Medicaid have been major contributors to the spiraling cost of Big Government and the breathtaking expansion of the national debt. Federal taxpayers now fork over more than $600 billion annually to the program. 

More than any other state, including notoriously corrupt Minnesota, New York has emerged as the poster child for profligate Medicaid expansion. 

Thanks to Big Labor New York politicians’ loosening of the standards for their state’s Medicaid-funded Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) — which is supposed to help seniors seeking home care — it tripled in size between 2019 and 2024. 

Where is that money going? 

Union Bosses Prey Upon Home-Based Caregivers 

For years, there has been a trend away from institutional nursing home settings for the sick and elderly across the country. The switch to home-based care initially utilized professionally trained aides. But many states, including New York in 2016, have decided to allow patients to hire their own relatives. 

Parents, adult children and other kin are often the best caregivers, but CDPAP contractors have often lacked the ability to vet such arrangements properly. This problem was aggravated and made significantly worse as Medicaid eligibility in the Empire State exploded during the pandemic. 

Citing this rapid growth, and the widespread attendant fraud, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) has moved to hand all CDPAP contracts to one company: Public Partnerships LLC (PPL). 

“This is where the union bosses from Service Employees International Union [SEIU] 1199 come into the picture,” said Matt Leen, vice president of the National Right to Work Committee. 

“Herding all Empire State home health providers into one ostensibly private firm will pave the way for 1199 kingpins to cut a deal with PPL executives to unionize all the home caregivers now under one roof. 

“This campaign is already underway. It could expand the number of workers forking over dues to 1199 from 450,000 to roughly 700,000. 

“Many, if not most, of the home-health providers who are corralled into 1199 won’t even know they’ve ‘joined’ the union!”

Brazen Big Labor Medicaid Dues-Skim Schemes Began Decades Ago

The fact is, SEIU bosses have been stealthily siphoning dues from the Medicaid-funded reimbursements furnished to parents and adult children to help them care for their loved ones for decades. In 2007, for example, then Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s (D) administration gave SEIU officials the green light to begin extracting dues from over 43,000 in-home health care workers, even though fewer than 20% of them had even voted in the election “certifying” the union.  

“What makes such schemes particularly galling is the fact that Big Labor has no ability to negotiate rates of payment for home caregivers. Those rates are determined solely at the federal level,” Mr. Leen noted. 

The Committee first helped expose the Michigan scheme to public scrutiny, then lobbied successfully for its termination in 2012. 

Other states like Illinois continued to allow skimming efforts. In response, Right to Work attorneys fought all the way to the Supreme Court to protect the rights of home-health workers in the Prairie State. 

In 2014, the High Court declared in the Right to Work-won Harris v. Quinn case that forced union fee payments as a condition of receiving Medicaid reimbursement for home health-care provision are prohibited under the U.S. Constitution. 

Unfortunately, several states, including California, Washington State, New York, and Michigan since 2024, have sought to circumvent Harris. Some have gone so far as to reclassify people who are caring for their own loved ones at home as private sector employees who may be corralled into unions under federal law! 

Committee Fights in D.C. To End Medicaid Dues Skims 

Mr. Leen noted: “Skimming dues from caregivers’ Medicaid reimbursements is actually illegal under 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill. It includes a provision that should be read to ban these skims, at least in many cases. 

“But actually stopping this Big Labor rip-off will require implementing regulations from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. That’s why the Committee has been urging the Trump Administration to restore a rule that had been adopted in 2018, only to be overturned by Biden operatives in 2022. 

“Most importantly, the Committee is pushing for passage of legislation to ban dues skims once and for all, for all Medicaid programs, so that this abuse can never be revived by any future administration.”

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