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Long Island health care providers say they are bracing for the financial impact of anticipated cuts to Medicaid as the Republican majority in Congress works on sweeping legislation to make 2017 tax cuts permanent. A cut to the federal share of Medicaid funding to New York would have a ripple effect across Long Island, where some 680,000 Nassau and Suffolk County residents with limited income rely on it to help cover medical costs. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives last month passed a budget resolution to extend the tax cuts…and to offset the cost cuts…they instructed a House committee with jurisdiction over Medicaid to cut spending by $880 billion over the next decade.

Tom Brune reports in NEWSDAY that Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that helps people with limited income and resources pay for medical costs, including medical and nursing home care, and personal care services. Recipients usually don't pay for their care, except for small co-payments.

New York State has one of the most generous programs — each state sets eligibility requirements and benefits — which is mostly paid for by the federal government.

The federal government paid $57.1 billion for Medicaid in New York State in fiscal year 2024, with the state putting up $35.9 billion and localities such as New York City paying $8.5 billion, according to the New York's Office of State Comptroller.

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By the time the danger had passed the Sunday morning after fire ripped through 600 acres of the Central Pine Barrens in Westhampton three weeks ago, those who protect the health of these woodlands already knew the long-term environmental impact of the fire would be a healthy one.

“The pine barrens is a fire dependent ecosystem. We will actually see a rebound in the ecosystem long-term,” said New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Acting Director Amanda Lefton at the March 9 press conference with first responders at Gabreski Airport. She added that forest rangers expect to see new trees growing in these woodlands in the weeks and months ahead. Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that the 2025 Westhampton Pines Fire burned through an especially rare section of the pine barrens, the Dwarf Pine Plains, so-called because of the stunted pitch pines that grow in this area of nutrient-poor soils and high winds.

In the days after the fire, staff of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, an environmental non-profit, reported seeing “hundreds of seeds fluttering in the air as the closed or serotinous cones of the dwarf pines opened up, due to the fire melting the resin that helps to keep the cones closed, and shed their seeds.”

While wildfires may be a natural part of the ecosystem, their impact on human communities can be devastating, and the Central Pine Barrens Commission has been working for the past several years on a comprehensive plan to guide the health of these woodlands for the long-term, using controlled burning to protect both human communities and ecosystems, mostly in the Rocky Point, Ridge and Manorville areas, but also in the David Sarnoff Preserve, just north of the site of the Westhampton Pines Fire, which backs up to several densely populated communities in Riverside.

The Central Pine Barrens Commission is embarking this year on a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) for nearly 30,000 acres of publicly owned lands just north of the dwarf pine area that burned in March. This area includes parts of Hampton Bays, Westhampton, Flanders, East Quogue and Quogue.

This plan has been in the works since well before the fire, which...