Gov. Kathy Hochul is crowing about injecting $109 million into Nassau University Medical Center -- cutting the public hospital's deficit in half -- but critics argue she's just providing funding it was owed anyway.
Hochul announced the allotment Thursday as a vote of confidence in NUMC's new state-appointed leadership and approval of the ongoing operational reforms.
She said the investment is intended to stabilize the hospital by slashing its deficit from more than $167 million to slightly under $83 million to put it on a path toward long-term sustainability.
"The funding reflects New York State's recognition of the hospital's progress under new leadership and its commitment to stabilizing operations while preserving access to essential health care services for Long Island residents," Hochul said in a statement.
The funding consists of more than $82 million from the state Health Department's Vital Access Provider Assurance Program and $27.5 million through an intergovernmental transfer tied to COVID-era Medicaid aid.
But not everyone is happy over how the money move played out.
The massive bump in funds comes just eight months after Hochul effectively gave the boot to Nassau County government and took over control of the hospital.
Local leaders had accused the state at the time of defrauding NUMC by concocting a scheme to secretly claw back dollars that were meant to support hospital for decades, sparking lawsuits as well as federal and congressional investigations.
Critics of the state takeover are now bashing Hochul for injecting money into the hospital they claim her administration had quietly withheld from NUMC in the first place.
They are arguing the infusion is simply Albany handing over funds that the hospital is already owed.
"Kathy Hochul withheld state funding from NUMC creating a fiscal crisis as a phony rationale for taking control of the NUMC board," raged Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, to The Post.
"This blatant power grab is just another example of Hochul's heavy handed tactics to collect more power at the expense of the underserved patients she withheld funds from for three years," he said.
On the same day Hochul announced the funding boost for NUMC, Republican Congressman and Chairman of the House Oversight Committee James Comer sent a letter to celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, urging federal health officials to step in as part of an escalating probe into whether New York illegally recycled Medicaid funds as part of the situation.
In his letter, which was obtained by The Post, Comer cited whistleblower allegations, The Post's reporting, and prior lawsuits claiming New York improperly handled Medicaid funds meant for such safety-net hospitals as NUMC.
The allegation involved forcing the hospitals to reimburse the state's share of Medicaid payments while Albany reported to the federal government that the money had been delivered to the facilities.
The alleged practice may have gone on for decades and could have cost NUMC alone more than $1 billion, according to the letter.
"The Committee is concerned that the State, and likely other states too, are failing to follow federal law by misrepresenting the source of the non-federal share that the State is responsible for providing," Comer wrote to Oz.
State officials have continuously denied any wrongdoing and maintain that the funding announced this week has been granted thanks t reforms and tighter oversight under the hospital's new leadership.
The Hochul administration has said the takeover of NUMC was necessary to stabilize the hospital and protect patient care, previously accusing Nassau County leadership of lackluster management -- which prior hospital leadership and county officials have denied.