The Times Union's Casey Seiler has a story on how Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Medicaid Redesign Team has handed off a package of 79 recommendations designed to save $2.3 billion from the health care program in the 2011-2012 fiscal year. The February 24 vote came at the end of six hours of discussion on the proposals, which ranged from elements as monumental as a global spending cap to more granular ideas such as tighter controls on prescription footwear. "The swiftness of the move to a vote -- a second day of discussion had been planned for Friday -- left several members of the panel feeling bruised," Seiler writes. "Lara Kassel of the advocacy group Medicaid Matters said she was 'shocked' by the decision, and chose to abstain." "More time for the sake of more time is not something that I think is beneficial to any of us," said James Introne, Cuomo's deputy secretary for health, just before the vote. The major elements of the package include a 4 percent cap on the state's share of Medicaid, which would be pegged at slightly more than $15 billion. The gross cost of New York's Medicaid program, including federal funds, would be almost $53 billion. To enforce the cap, the state Department of Health and the Budget Division would be charged with monitoring month-to-month spending, and would be empowered to impose "utilization controls" and rate reductions if those agencies determined it was about to be exceeded. The plan would also initiate a rapid expansion of the use of managed care programs: Within three years, almost all Medicaid recipients would be entered into a program in which all major aspects of their care would be centrally monitored. The plan, sent to Cuomo, must now pass muster with both bodies of the state legislature.