On the Golden City Grownup Social Day Care in Chinatown on a latest Tuesday afternoon, a handful of aged Chinese language immigrants of their winter jackets picked at plates of lo mein and rice.
Lunch is provided by an area restaurant, the place costs for a typical dish vary round $7 to 12.
However this isn’t a soup kitchen or lunch counter. It’s a medical facility, and taxpayers spend $85 a plate at Golden City, due to a Medicaid cash pit that invitations savvy enterprise homeowners to take advantage of the system.
“They simply are available in for lunch,” an worker of Golden City instructed The Submit when requested what different providers had been offered by the middle.
They added transportation is obtainable for Golden City’s 100 purchasers, however most want to stroll, particularly “if the climate is good.”
Extremely, the entire thing is totally authorized, with the non-public homeowners of those facilities making the most of a system which has little or no oversight and prices New York taxpayers a $400 million tab yearly, an investigation by The Submit can reveal.
The Social Grownup Day Care facilities (SADCs) are presupposed to be solely for seniors with a “power sickness or incapacity.”
If Medicaid guidelines had been strictly interpreted, such facilities shouldn’t be “letting in well-bodied seniors,” a state Medicaid official who spoke on the situation of anonymity instructed The Submit.
“Principally, you shouldn’t see anybody getting into these locations who isn’t in a wheelchair or walker,” the supply stated.
However these requirements aren’t enforced, and to function, the foundations are obscure, with the facilities required to supply “diet,” “structured actions,” and “socialization,” in response to the Division of Well being.
Throughout the river in Flushing, Queens, round 10 a.m. senior residents started to scurry out and in of Excellence and Longevity Heart — some to seize a to-go bag lunch earlier than dashing off.
Inside, a gaggle of purchasers aged 65+ performed ping pong, rode stationary bikes, and loved lunch.
The variety of SADC facilities has jumped from 40 in 2013 to nearly 400 immediately, popping up in storefronts, flats, and basements throughout the 5 boroughs, despite the fact that their choices are barely distinguishable from city-run senior facilities, which additionally present transport, lunch and actions —, however for a fraction of the associated fee.
The Submit visited 13 SADCs in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan over three days and located little proof of any medical help being provided or administered.
And competitors between amenities is intense, with homeowners jockeying for repeat guests — as a result of they will cost a lot again to Medicaid.
A employee at Confucius Social Grownup Day Care in Manhattan confirmed to The Submit kickbacks and bribes are rampant within the business — and a few daycares lure seniors in with guarantees of grocery vouchers or money in the event that they join their program, though he made it clear Confucius doesn’t have interaction in that observe and the middle has additionally not been accused of any wrongdoing.
It’s not clear if even the seniors themselves know the distinction between Grownup Day Cares and state-run senior facilities.
A spokesperson confirmed to The Submit that the Division of Well being “estimates roughly $400 million was reimbursed” by Medicaid for SADCs in 2024.
“The foundations on this are extraordinarily difficult,” Chris Pope, a well being care coverage skilled with the Manhattan Institute, instructed The Submit.
“That is offered as preserving folks out of nursing properties. [But if] folks aren’t actually liable to ending up in nursing properties, it’s positively value asking, is that professional?” he stated.
There are a number of various causes for seniors to go to daycare facilities and not one of the companies visited by The Submit for this story have been accused of doing something unlawful.
Within the mid-2010s underneath Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York State aggressively switched to this “community-based” system for long run care, billed as a solution to lower spending.
However it hasn’t labored and New York’s Medicaid spending has ballooned from $50 billion a 12 months to a gob-smacking $96 billion in 2025, whereas the inhabitants of seniors has solely grown by about 30 p.c throughout that point.
A Medicaid fraud case revealed final June uncovered $68 million was being stolen from taxpayers in a scheme involving two SADCs in Brooklyn. Proprietor Zakia Khan’s racket paid kickbacks and bribes to entrepreneurs for referring Medicaid recipients to her SADCs from 2017 onward.
In 2024, ElderServe, Inc. a healthcare supplier, paid a $10.1 million settlement for billing Medicaid for providers that weren’t offered, together with SADC. In 2018 one other supplier, Facilities Plan for Wholesome Residing, paid $1.6 million again to the state after it was caught enrolling seniors in SADCs who didn’t meet the necessities.
New York spends probably the most Medicaid cash per affected person than every other state and 77 p.c greater than the nationwide common. New York’s spending is nearly double the second-most pricey state in per-person price, Kentucky.
This 12 months New York initiatives its spending will attain $115 billion, in response to the NYS Comptroller’s Workplace, placing it neck-and-neck with California — which has double the inhabitants.
Texas and Florida, each extra populous than the Empire State, spend a fraction of what New York does on Medicaid.
The prices of SADCs are counted alongside different House and Neighborhood-Primarily based Companies (HCBS), by the state, which additionally contains the Client Directed Private Help Program (CDPAP), which pays folks by the hour to take care of their aged kinfolk of their properties, and is notoriously fraudulent.
HCBS is the most important single expense in New York’s Medicaid spending, costing taxpayers $10.6 billion in 2024, in response to a breakdown reviewed by the Submit.
“We’re seeing fraud all around the nation. I believe it’s time the federal authorities will get concerned and begins trying into New York State, in addition to New York Metropolis,” Republican metropolis council member Vickie Paladino, of District 19 in Queens, instructed The Submit.
“Let’s discover out the place all the cash’s going. Let Minneapolis be the blueprint for these huge blue cities. It’s time for a significant audit.”
New York Metropolis’s 300 senior facilities obtain a lump sum for operations from town funds, whereas SADCs are billed like a physician’s go to — based mostly on utilization, reasonably than enrollment.
“There are essential distinctions. [Senior center] membership is open to all New Yorkers ages 60 and older. [They] serve meals, and in-person and digital actions are designed to satisfy the wants of their members.
“SADC’s serve adults with purposeful impairments and wish the next degree of care than OACs can present,” a spokesperson for the Division of the Ageing instructed The Submit.
Half of all complaints in 2022 about SADCs associated to Medicaid fraud, in response to the NYC Division for the Ageing.
The state’s Medicaid fraud investigation unit referred 454 instances to the Lawyer Normal’s workplace that 12 months, however that workplace refused to touch upon what number of of these had been being actively investigated.
The amenities at elder daycares may also fluctuate wildly. At Enriched Grownup Day Care in New Utrecht, Brooklyn, administrator Olga took The Submit on a tour of the ability, which included a magnificence salon, arts and crafts room, a library, and ping pong desk. A shopper was celebrating her 69th birthday and a handful of seniors sat round a desk taking part in dominos. Olga stated her facility serves 200 purchasers every day.
The vibe shifted down the road at one other facility, New Century Grownup Day Care, the place in a big open room sat one lone senior tucked away in a nook, his reflection seen from a floor-to-ceiling dance studio-style mirror.
A person who gave the impression to be the supervisor hurried The Submit out the door and refused to reply any questions.
A number of SADCs talked about and photographed for this story didn’t return requests for remark. None have been implicated in any criminality.
