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New York State Health

‘Complete Waste of Our Time’: Lawmakers Get Few Answers on Home Care Chaos

The company in charge said they would explore other insurance options.

Sam Mellins   ·   August 22, 2025
Senator James Skoufis is shown speaking to a group of reporters in a hallway.
Senator Skoufis told reporters that "80 percent" of Thursday's hearing was "a complete waste of time." The senator is shown here speaking to reporters in 2023. | NY State Senate Photo, Flickr; Illustration, New York Focus
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Since April, New York’s state-funded home care program has been in upheaval. That month, the $9 billion program was taken over by the company Public Partnerships, LLC (PPL), which became responsible for managing the care of the hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled New Yorkers who use it.

Home care workers and patients have consistently struggled to navigate PPL’s bureaucracy, reporting unreturned calls, missed paychecks, malfunctioning software, and other issues. Thousands of people have left the program entirely.

On Thursday, New York lawmakers held a hearing trying to get to the bottom of the chaos.

They did not get the answers they were looking for. Over the course of more than four hours, the main witnesses at the hearing spent most of their time dodging or declining to answer questions from the dozen assembled state senators.

New York Senator James Skoufis is shown sitting down and speaking into a microphone during a legislative hearing.

“We hardly got any information,” said Senator James Skoufis, who chairs the Investigations Committee. “80 percent of it was a complete waste of our time.”

The two key witnesses were Patty Byrnes, a vice president at PPL, and Commissioner James McDonald of the state Department of Health, which oversees and funds the program.

Senator Lea Webb asked McDonald how the state is ensuring that PPL performs the services that the state is paying it for. McDonald responded that there are accountability mechanisms, but declined to list any.

“It’s in the contract, and I’m not sure if that part of the contract is public, so I’m not sure I can give those examples,” McDonald said.

Skoufis asked Byrnes if she could guarantee that PPL will remain solvent for the duration of its five-year contract with the state.

“I’m not sure. I am not the one to be able to make that statement, but at this time, we are solvent,” Byrnes responded.

Robyn Hodgson at a rally in Lancaster, PA.

Speaking to reporters, Skoufis said that next steps are unclear, but that, “You can be sure that this is not the end of the conversation.”

New York Focus has been reporting extensively on the changes in the home care program, with a particular focus on the low-quality health benefits that PPL is offering to its employees. The main health insurance plan the company is offering does not cover basic services like specialist visitors or hospital care, and is paid for by mandatory deductions from workers’ paychecks.

To offer the plan, PPL partnered with health insurer Leading Edge Administrators, which has a history of revoking patients’ insurance and refusing to pay their doctors.

Several lawmakers expressed dismay about the health plan.

“I can give one of your employees a packet of Band-Aids, and that’s better primary care coverage than they’re getting from PPL,” Skoufis said to Byrnes, the PPL vice president. “How do you reconcile that with your statement that you work with empathy and compassion for your employees?”

Byrnes responded that the company is providing “what we are obliged to do under law.”

When Senator Rachel May asked Byrnes if she would take a job with the health insurance that PPL is offering to home care workers, she did not address the question.

During his testimony, Health Commissioner McDonald said that he shared lawmakers’ worries about PPL’s health insurance.

“I think the challenge on PPL is to address the insurance concerns. I think it’s a very legitimate concern,” he said. “I’ve had a conversation with them more than once about this.”

Later during her testimony, Byrnes said that PPL hopes to offer workers higher-quality health insurance in 2026.

“We are in the process of talking to brokers about what we can do to provide better services as we go into the next open enrollment period,” she said.

New York Focus has also raised the question of whether PPL and Leading Edge may be illegally holding on to some of the money they deduct from workers’ paychecks to pay for health benefits. By law, those funds can only be spent on health benefits, and may not be retained by the companies.

Senator Gustavo Rivera, who chairs the Health Committee, asked if PPL is following this law. Byrnes said that PPL is not retaining the money, but said that due to pending lawsuits against PPL, she couldn’t provide any further details.

The lawmakers weren’t the only ones who couldn’t get answers. Following Byrnes’ testimony, New York Focus directed several questions to Byrnes and another representative of PPL who was present at the hearing. Both refused to speak.

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Sam Mellins is senior reporter at New York Focus, which he has been a part of since launch day. His reporting has also appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Intercept, THE CITY, and The Nation. Reach him on Signal: mellins.613
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