If only there was a website with all the info parents need to find child care in New York City, including a map with every licensed provider in each neighborhood…
Oh wait! Now there is: nyc.gov/childcare
Ever wonder how to get rid of a mattress? Or how to find resources for a neighbor in need? Call 311.Â
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311 is contacted 100,000 times every day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. No call is too small.Â
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So on the anniversary of 311 (3/11), I decided to answer some of those calls myself.
Screenshot of NYC child care map with mayor Mamdani overlaid. Text on screen “NYC finally has a childcare map. Parents can now easily search for childcare facilities based on cost, distance, age and more at nyc.gov/childcare”
Screen shot of Amanda litman’s tweet and screenshot of the nyc child care map Text on screen “Cannot emphasize enough what percentage of messages in neighborhood mom chats are "does anyone have a spreadsheet of all the childcare places around here" - this is a small thing that's a big service. Explore NYC's map of V Find childcare near work or home childcare providers at V Sort by age, cost, and care setting nyc.gov/childcare Contact providers”
Every day, we're pursuing small changes that make a huge difference: like building a map of licensed childcare providers in New York City at @ nyc.gov/childcare.
Building a robust social safety net, including public childcare, requires universality and free access at the point of use.
We must move beyond what @lukef.bsky.social calls the “neoliberal obsession with complex and federated means-testing that creates the opportunity for corporate capture.”
There are a lot of smart implementation people gravitating to the Mamdani administration right now. For example, @lukef.bsky.social, who wrote this piece, is the leading government delivery innovation for NYC now.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-means-...
Awesome interview with Luke Farrell @lukef.bsky.social on the Complex Systems podcast. "Understanding government procurement" How do we get @patio11 in here?
www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/und...
Worth remembering that current Republican Senator Rick Scott oversaw the largest Medicaid fraud in history, at the time, as the CEO of the largest for-profit hospital system in America.
All my homies hate a price gouging data broker preying on America’s safety net!
Thanks so much Joan!
You can read the full letter from @warren.senate.gov @wyden.senate.gov @sanders.senate.gov here:
www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/do...
Glad to be quoted in the letter.
We'll see if/how Equifax complies with the requests like the one "for each state contract, please provide estimated per-query costs for 2026" which would be a big deal for state governments.
This Equifax takedown letter from Senators Warren, Wyden, and Sanders is encouraging, but it's insane we need Senators to demand public price transparency from a contractor that works for the public
I’m glad there is broad political consensus that this is a problem. I have some ideas on how we can actually fix it through antitrust enforcement, growing state capacity to build, and simplifying programs to protect them from capture. 👇
lpeproject.org/blog/the-mea...
I was at USDS, which became DOGE, and during the transition I urged them to focus on the vast majority of waste fraud and abuse which occurs in gov contracting.
They nodded excitedly and then invaded up the US Institute for Peace instead.
Deloitte is a $74B cancer on American government is an accurate diagnosis, but MAGA is constitutionally incapable of solving this problem.
Government inefficiency, privatization, and grift *is* their political project.
The week in review: Edie Conekin-Tooze on hidden foster care as neoliberal family governance, an open letter from seventy-two UMN law faculty, and @lukef.bsky.social on the means-testing industrial complex.
Plus, as always, the best of LPE from around the web 🧵👇
New at Can We Still Govern: Here is one thing I wish more people understood about government. There is a lot of rent-seeking by private vendors in our social safety net. Trump's policies will make this worse.
@lukef.bsky.social breaks it down. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-means-...
Important thread: for a long time I have been waiting to see a clear critique of vendor influence over the safety net space. This maps out the political economy of vendor capture of safety net systems.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but love to dunk on bad contractors (also we are about to see this same thing play out in the other 55 states in territories this year because of new federal work requirements)
Today, Luke Farrell (@lukef.bsky.social) explains how complex eligibility requirements have turned America’s safety net into a lucrative revenue stream for monopolistic private contractors.
In the piece I argue that we can Enforce, Build, and Simplify our way out of this Means-Testing Industrial Complex and stop sacrificing our public programs to poorly performing contractors.
"A map of the United States titled 'Deloitte Plays Vital Role in State Medicaid Systems.' The map uses circles to show that Deloitte has contracts in 25 states, worth at least $6 billion and covering 53 million enrollees. Circle size represents Medicaid enrollment (1M, 4M, and 10M), while circle color represents contract value: purple for under $100M, blue for $100M-$500M, and black for over $500M. Major contracts over $500M are visible in states like California, Texas, and Florida. Source: KFF Health News reporting."
The story is the same for Deloitte's domination of eligibility systems that determine who gets Medicaid coverage and who does not.
With over $6B in contracts across 25 states, new work requirements included in OBBBA are an enormous opportunity to prey on bureaucratic complexity and profit.
Line graph titled 'Equifax's prices quickly tripled in Colorado' showing the cost per data match from 2016 to 2025. The price starts at $5.53 in 2016, remains fairly flat until 2022, and then spikes sharply to $15 by 2025. Source: Colorado Dept. of Human Services.
This Means-Testing Industrial Complex is epitomized by Equifax's domination of income verification where the government has backed itself into a corner.
OBBBA requires more complex and frequent verifications which will rely on one dominate private company that is mercilessly hiking prices.
Corporations are extracting billions from America’s safety net and their payday is about to be supercharged by new rules.
I lay out how programs like Medicaid have become vulnerable to corporate capture and what we need to build to stop it.
@lpeblog.bsky.social
lpeproject.org/blog/the-mea...
I’m glad you liked it! Thanks for sharing and happy to chat about the proposals I lay out any time :)
Eternally grateful for my USDS colleagues that drove around the country in a van with me for the most exhausting and fulfilling year of my life ❤️
Huge thanks to the great team at Better Government Labs for coauthoring the research out in Health Affairs @donmoyn.bsky.social @pamherd.bsky.social @giannella.bsky.social @jbarofsky.bsky.social and for allowing me to moonlight as blogger.
Open Access Paper: www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10....
The CBO estimates that 5M people will lose their Medicaid as work requirements take effect.
States must build in-house tech capacity now to protect their enrollees through the coming crisis and beyond.
The challenge ahead is enormous and states need the capacity to meet the moment.
Our bet paid off - across red and blue states representing over 40% of the nation's Medicaid population, we doubled automatic renewal rates and halved the number of people losing coverage for procedural and paperwork reasons.
Quietly across the country, millions of people kept their health care.
