Home Care Workers Sound Alarm as PPL Again Imposes Unaffordable Health Insurance on CDPAP Workforce

NEW YORK, NY (04/22/2026) (readMedia)-- On Wednesday, home care workers, consumers, and advocates held a press conference to sound the alarm on new health insurance and benefit offerings under Public Partnerships LLC (PPL): the private equity-backed company that now manages New York State's Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) just over one year ago. Taking effect next month, these new benefits leave workers with little time and few real options. One year into PPL's takeover - which has already driven as many as 150,000 workers and 90,000 consumers from the program - the new benefit offerings remain fundamentally unaffordable for a workforce already grappling with unpaid wages, and trap workers between inadequate health insurance and locked-away wages.

A recording of the press conference is linked here.

Beginning next month, PPL is shifting CDPAP workers to a new private insurer, Anthem, offering only two health plan options.

For a workforce already earning low wages and struggling to obtain already earned wages through the PPL system, these healthcare costs represent a significant and often insurmountable financial barrier. For example, under the Bronze plan, a worker who gets sick could owe nearly $9,000 before insurance pays for meaningful care.

"Last year, New York State's CDPAP transition robbed tens of thousands of workers of access to healthcare by eliminating their eligibility for the Essential Plan, ACA Premium Tax Credits, spousal coverage or retiree benefits," said Michael Kinnucan, Health Policy Director at the Fiscal Policy Institute. "One year later, neither the Hochul administration nor PPL has acted to restore these benefits, and PPL continues to offer a health plan that would require workers to pay thousands of dollars a year in premiums for coverage that would require over $5,000 in out-of-pocket costs for routine care."

"PPL's failures are not abstract - I have lived them. Between timekeeping errors, weeks-long onboarding with no support, and payment problems that never fully get resolved, the system is broken for workers on the ground. And now, on top of all of that, PPL is rolling out health insurance plans that workers like me simply cannot afford - and if we opt out, our wages get locked away where we can't touch them. There is no workable option here, and Albany needs to act," said Lolli Edinger, a Home Care Worker and NY Caring Majority Member.

Additionally, for any worker who opts out of PPL's health insurance face a second problem: their wage parity benefit dollars are automatically redirected into a retirement account. While retirement savings are a workplace benefit, workers have no option to receive wage parity funds as direct wages, as many were able to do prior to PPL's takeover. And these are workers already enduring payment delays and payroll access issues within the new PPL system, now facing an additional layer of financial uncertainty.

Under PPL's management, CDPAP workers are offered coverage they cannot afford, and if they decline it, their benefit dollars are placed in an account they may not be able to access for years. There is no path to simply receiving fair wages.

"Before PPL, I received $21 an hour and could plan my budget - my previous fiscal intermediary paid me like clockwork and gave me the choice to take my wage parity dollars as wages, which I needed to pay for my mother's housing and food. PPL took that choice away," said Sumi, a CDPAP care giver in Brooklyn, NY. "Now they are withholding my earnings and redirecting them into a retirement plan I did not ask for and cannot use, I am already past the point of retirement planning. Every dollar I earn goes directly to caring for my 104-year-old mother. I lost nearly $7,000 last year alone, and there has not been a single week I have been paid correctly. I am caring for a 104-year-old woman, 32 hours a week, with no certainty of when or whether or how much I will be paid. This is not a benefits program, it's wage theft."

"I spent five years fighting for the right to be paid to care for my own daughter. Sarah's needs are significant - I can no longer work outside the home, and being her caregiver is my livelihood. PPL has taken that away. The health insurance they offer is financially unattainable for me, and because of it, I was forced out of the program entirely. Her CDPAP services have now been discontinued. She is one of many who have fallen through the cracks of this transition, despite the Department of Health's assurances that this wouldn't happen. This is what keeps me awake at night," said Doris, a former CDPAP caregiver in Rochester, NY.

CDPAP is a lifeline for older and disabled New Yorkers in need of home care, and provides hundreds of thousands of caregiving jobs. Prior to the PPL transition, CDPAP was administered through a network of traditional intermediary agencies, many of which offered workers the flexibility to direct their wage parity dollars towards take-home wages rather than insurance. This was a critical option for workers who obtained insurance through other means, such as a partner's plan. That flexibility has been fully eliminated under PPL's centralized benefits model.

Governor Kathy Hochul continues to claim the new system under PPL saved New York $1.2 billion dollars, but over a year later, no details have been provided to back this claim. New Yorkers have no clear picture of how Medicaid dollars meant to provide care are being spent, or whether the switch to PPL is actually saving money while delivering adequate care to hundreds of thousands of older and disabled New Yorkers. Home care workers, consumers, and advocates are urging Albany lawmakers to advance legislation sponsored by Sen. Leroy Comrie and AM Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas that would require regular public reporting on how CDPAP dollars are spent, implementing common sense oversight to protect both essential services and public dollars.

The reporting requirements include:

• Utilization data
• Financial data
• Customer service requests, complaints, and accessibility including language and disability access.
• Consumer directed personal assistant data, including payroll and wage information.
• Information regarding interactions with subcontracted facilitators.
• Any cases of fraud, as well as any audits or investigations being conducted into the single fiscal intermediary

Beyond fixing the benefits structure, advocates are calling on lawmakers to restore a small set of vetted, community-based fiscal intermediaries that can offer workers and consumers real choices - particularly for people with disabilities and non-English speakers who have been left behind by PPL's one-size-fits-all approach.

About the NY Caring Majority

NY Caring Majority is an organization of people with disabilities, older adults, family caregivers, and home care workers.We are organizing to build a sustainable and just caring economy. We call for greater investments in home and community-based care, as a necessary means to meet our broader goal of dignity, self-determination, access and justice for all.

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