Non-profit agencies and the 600,000 people with psychiatric disabilities for whom they provide services each year are at risk in New York State where proposals to trim $775 million for health were announced by the governor's office. A coalition of service providers and advocates called attention to the likely, crippling consequences.

As is the case elsewhere, New York's budget constraints will affect people who are poor, disabled, and already suffer from poor health. Decisions not to tax sugared beverages and hike them on cigarettes, which separately and together produce ill health, The proposed $775 million Gov. David Paterson announced will also take from hospitals, the elderly,

Unanticipated cuts in Medicaid extension will hurt at least 30 states, wrote Kevin Sack in the The New York Times

The confluence of an increase in need due to the recession, across the board state shortfalls, state laws requiring balanced budgets, and political jockeying to rein in deficit spending from bills already approved cuts government aid substantially. The governors of California, Pennsylvania, and New York anticipate widespread suffering since, like most, they incorporated anticipated federal funds in their budgets. Not all states included the anticipated windfall in their day-to-day calculations. Ohio was one of them. Still, as reported in the Columbus Dispatch, mental health services are at risk because of the threat to the six-month extension of Medicaid.