Credit: Getty Images.

When I travel across New York, I meet families doing everything they can to care for their loved ones at home — aging parents, disabled children, partners battling illness. For many of them, the Consumer-Directed Personal Assistance Program is more than a Medicaid service. It’s a lifeline.

That lifeline is unraveling.

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Since Gov. Kathy Hochul handed control of CDPAP to a private equity-backed corporation called Public Partnerships LLC (PPL), older and disabled New Yorkers are losing access to the care they need to live with dignity. Tens of thousands of caregivers — overwhelmingly women, immigrants and low-income workers — have been unpaid or underpaid. Entire families are being thrown into crisis, and upstate communities are being hit the hardest.

This is what I’ve heard firsthand.

I’ve sat with caregivers who’ve gone weeks without a paycheck, forced to choose between buying groceries or paying rent. I’ve spoken with daughters who’ve lost the aides who cared for their parents because those aides couldn’t afford to keep working under........

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