New York State Health Labor

Fraudster-Linked Company Set to Begin Massive Insurance Contract for Home Health Workers

The company used to help employers avoid paying for workers’ benefits. Now it’s slated to administer health insurance for tens of thousands of low-wage New Yorkers.

Sam Mellins · March 20, 2025

Governor Kathy Hochul and her health department commissioner James McDonald at a desk

Governor Kathy Hochul and her health department commissioner James McDonald are pushing an overhaul of New York's home care industry. | Governor's Press Office

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In six weeks, New York state will push tens of thousands of low-paid home health care workers onto a private insurance plan that won’t cover basic medical needs.

That’s not the only alarming thing about the plan. The founder of Leading Edge, the company set to administer the plan, was convicted of submitting falsified documents to Congress in an attempt to hide corporate losses, and the company appears to have spent years helping New York home care employers skirt a law meant to boost worker pay and benefits, according to court filings reviewed by New York Focus.

Leading Edge’s background raises concerns of whether the upcoming transfer could present an opportunity for a company with a sketchy past to cash in on the backs of New York’s health care workforce, paid for by taxpayer money.

The transition comes as the state tries to curb the rapidly mounting costs of its $6 billion home health care program, which is funded by taxpayer dollars through Medicaid, the state’s health insurance plan for low-income New Yorkers. Under a plan championed by Governor Kathy Hochul, the state health department has been moving to replace the roughly 600 private companies that currently administer the program with one company. That company, Public Partnerships LLC, selected Leading Edge to provide health insurance to home care workers.

“This is like a health plan designed by DOGE.”

—Barbara Caress, Baruch College

When the scheduled switchover goes through on May 1, home health care workers in New York City and its suburbs will have their own health insurance changed to a plan that does not cover doctor’s visits, maternal care, hospitalization, chemotherapy, or a host of other services. The average annual pay for a home care worker in New York is under $40,000.

Hochul spokesperson Sam Spokony defended the plan: “Under CDPAP today, thousands of full-time workers have no health insurance because their fiscal intermediaries simply don’t offer it – and that’s unacceptable,” he said.

“Under the new CDPAP transition, every full-time CDPAP worker in New York will have access to health insurance. The State will work closely with all stakeholders to ensure that CDPAP workers are fully informed about their health insurance options as part of the transition.”

He did not address questions about the gaps in Leading Edge’s coverage or about its past practices.

PPL spokesperson Lacey Hautzinger also talked up the plan, saying that it will provide health insurance and a benefits package including paid vacation and “participation in a 401k plan” for “every full-time CDPAP worker in New York.”

“PPL is offering a health benefit plan which will allow workers to access health insurance enabling them to protect their health, stay healthy and continue to serve as a caregiver,” Hautzinger said.

A Medicaid advocate offered a less favorable view.

“It’s garbage. It’s not affordable, and it doesn’t provide access to comprehensive benefits,” said Lara Kassel, coordinator of the nonprofit Medicaid Matters New York, which has called for the state to delay the switch. “It’s alarming that the state would endorse a program that would cause people to be put in this position.”

Leading Edge did not respond to requests for comment.

Leading Edge’s checkered legal past stretches back to the 1990s, when Jerry Weissman, its future founder, served as the chief financial officer of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a health insurance company. In 1997, Weissman was convicted of obstructing a US Senate investigation into Empire Blue Cross and filing false reports to a Senate subcommittee, in what prosecutors said was an attempt to hide more than $80 million in losses. Sentenced to 18 months in jail, he was released in 2001 and barred from management level-positions in insurance companies for 13 years.

A person witting in a bed receiving home care. A silhouette of a figure with a question mark over their face holds out a handful of money.

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But when he decided he wanted to get back into the health insurance business, he found a workaround. Rather than Weissman owning the company himself, his wife Barbara officially ran the show.

In 2010, the Weissmans and several associates founded Omni Administrators, Inc., which would become Leading Edge in 2012. Barbara, a part owner, nominated Jerry to a seat on the board.

Jerry was deeply involved in the company. As part of a private lawsuit against Leading Edge brought by a disgruntled former employee, independent investigators interviewed five people associated with the company, including the Weissmans, all of whom said that Jerry founded and managed Leading Edge. The investigators reported Jerry saying that his wife was in ownership rather than him “as a result of his criminal conviction, and on the advice of counsel.”

Asked if PPL is concerned about Weissman’s criminal background, Hautzinger, the PPL spokesperson, said “the incident involving Jerry Weissman occurred 25 years ago.”

“Leading Edge Administrators was selected based on a recommendation from our trusted benefits advisor,” Hautzinger said. “The company was founded in New York City and has served New York companies and their workers successfully for 15 years.”

Beginning in 2012, that service included helping home health care companies skirt a law designed to boost the wages of low-paid home health care workers — the same category of workers that Leading Edge is slated to start covering on May 1.

In 2012, New York implemented a law requiring home care companies in New York City and its suburbs to pay their workers extra wages above the industry minimum, either in the form of cash or in supplemental benefits.

But clever minds in the industry developed a strategy to get around the law and keep the money for themselves, minus a small percentage that went to third-party companies like Leading Edge.

The strategy amounted to the home care companies paying the funds to an insurance company, then having it refund the money to the home care company — all without the employees seeing any benefit.

To operate this scheme, Leading Edge created its own subsidiary health insurance company in 2012 known as Omni Captive. Over its lifespan, Omni Captive collected millions in payments, but distributed almost nothing to health care employees. From 2012 to 2020, it collected $24 million in payments that were supposed to benefit home care workers, and sent at least $22 million back to the home care companies — not their employees. Weissman told the investigators there were “very few claims filed” under Omni Captive’s plan, enabling them to send almost all of the money back to the employers.

Photo collage of a home health aide fixing a dextrose IV bag, with a background of two large analog clocks showing a late hour.

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Home care companies that participated in this operation paid Leading Edge more than $20 million for this and other services.

The Department of Justice and New York’s attorney general have prosecuted companies for behavior that appears similar to Leading Edge’s.

In a settlement with the Department of Justice and New York’s attorney general last year, two home health care companies and four of their former owners agreed to pay over $17 million to settle claims that they had cheated their employees out of millions in benefits that they should have received from 2012 to 2020. The companies appear to have used the same strategy as Leading Edge.

This type of scheme finally came to an end in April 2020 when New York lawmakers changed the relevant law to prevent companies from keeping money intended for their employees. The same week the state legislature passed this change, Leading Edge shut down its insurance program “as a result of changes to New York’s wage parity law,” investigators reported Jerry saying.

Little is known about how Leading Edge has conducted its affairs since 2020. But the company still lists Barbara Weissman as a manager. It also continues to employ several individuals involved with its former business of helping companies hold on to cash meant to benefit workers, according to LinkedIn profiles.

The new state contract could give Leading Edge another chance to get its hands on money meant for home care workers — this time, on a far larger scale. Part of every downstate home care worker’s hourly pay will go to Leading Edge, as payment for the health insurance.

New York’s home health care workers provide hundreds of millions of hours of care a year, which will translate into hundreds of millions of dollars in annual payments to Leading Edge, in exchange for insurance coverage that will not cover basic medical necessities.

“This is a well designed scam, and its beneficiaries are PPL and Leading Edge,” said Barbara Caress, a retired health policy administrator who teaches health policy at Baruch College. “This is like a health plan designed by DOGE.”