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AARP New York worked hard this year to secure measures enhancing financial security as well as affordable and accessible health care for all consumers in this year’s state budget. A prescription drug discount card, mortgage foreclosure protection, and choices in long-term care topped our state legislative agenda. The following AARP-supported measures were passed in the 2008 New York State budget.

Prescription Drug Affordability
Rx Discount Card: The Rx discount card will allow people ages 50 to 64 and all people with disabilities to save up to 30% on their brand name drugs and close to 60% on generics drugs. Eligibility for the card will be based on existing EPIC income guidelines—with the card available to individuals with incomes of less than $35,000 and to married couples with incomes of less than $50,000. An AARP survey released this year reveals that 19% of New Yorkers age 50-64 years old have either delayed taking their prescriptions or did not fill their prescriptions to save money on their drug bills.

Countering Drug Industry Marketing: The New York State Department of Health will develop, in collaboration with an academic institution, a program designed to provide physicians with an evidence-based, non-commercial source of the latest objective information about pharmaceuticals. Information shall be presented to physicians by specially-trained pharmacists, nurses, or other health professionals to assist physicians with making appropriate therapeutic recommendations. The drug industry spends billions of dollars to convince doctors to prescribe new, high cost, brand name drugs when older or generic drugs that cost less and are equally effective may be available.

Long Term Care
Caregiver Centers of Excellence: The creation of up to seven regional caregiver “Centers for Excellence” will provide education and training to caregivers. These centers will also develop and implement innovative approaches to assisting caregivers, including stress reduction and funding respite care. Eighty percent of all long term care in New York is provided by informal family caregivers.

“Aging in Place”: Up to eight community empowerment initiative start-up grants will be awarded to enable communities, neighborhoods, elders, and families to develop their own support services that allow older persons to "age in place" and stay in their own neighborhoods.

Senior Transportation: $1 million for expenses related to transportation services to the elderly will be administered by the State Office for the Aging to continue to enable older people to live in their communities.

Enriched Adult Day Demonstration Project: This project will create an enriched social adult day care services demonstration project to help older New Yorkers “age in place” in the community by allowing adult day care programs to coordinate certain personal care services and heath needs of adult day care enrollees under the supervision of a health care professionals.

Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis
The 2008-09 New York State budget will provide $25 million in grants through the Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) to non-profit organizations that provide counseling and legal services to homeowners facing foreclosure or who are in default. The new program will also help subprime borrowers restructure the terms of their preparatory loans to allow them to continue to live in their homes. In addition, for the first time require the state to develop a report to examine mort gage defaults in the state, including foreclosure rates, the causes, and the unmet needs that exist in the state due to loan defaults. The subprime mortgage crisis has resulted in thousands of New York homeowners losing their homes. In 2007, there were more than 52,000 foreclosures in New York State. According to recent Banking Department estimates, approximately 60% of foreclosures are comprised of subprime loans.

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
The state budget included $1.8 million to fund 13 regional programs to support grandparents raising grandchildren as well as $250,000 for a statewide navigator program and state resource center to assist all state providers assisting grandparents raising grandchildren.