Private equity-backed PPL settles wage theft case, faces DOJ lawsuit
July 23, 2026
DW Healthcare- and Linden Capital-backed PPL settles $162 million wage theft class action, faces DOJ lawsuit
Private equity firms DW Healthcare Partners and Linden Capital Partners are the largestowners of Public Partnerships, LLC (PPL).
In late June, PPL agreed to pay $162 million to settle allegations that it systematically underpaid nearly 200,000 home health aides in New York. The settlement is the result of a class-action lawsuit alleging that PPL mismanaged payments after taking over New York’s Consumer-Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP).
PPL is the largest provider of fiscal intermediary services in the US, primarily for Medicaid self-directed care programs, with over 50 programs in 20 states. Self-directed care allows eligible individuals to select their own known and trusted caregiver to provide care in their own home.
PPL is accused of failing to pay workers in a timely manner, as well as failing to provide adequate health insurance. As a McKnights Home Care article explained, to comply with the New York Home Care Worker Parity Law, home health workers must “receive both slightly higher cash minimum wage and a supplemental compensation component, which can be paid in either cash or benefits. PPL chose to fulfill the benefit supplement with a health plan.” The money for the mandatory health plan was deducted from wages at 40 cents per hour from workers’ paychecks. The nonprofit newsroom New York Focus “estimated that PPL could make as much as $60 million in annual profits from the plan.” Meanwhile, home health aides in New York typically make about $20 per hour. The lawyers for the class action lawsuit alleged that the “plan provided little or no value to the personal assistants because it only covered the most basic of preventive healthcare and didn’t provide any coverage for things like illness or injury or hospitalization.” As part of the settlement, PPL agreed to end the mandatory health plan that provided inadequate and costly coverage for employees.
The settlement is believed to be the largest wage-and-hour class action settlement in New York and one of the largest nationally. Under the terms of the settlement, PPL agreed to pay $40.5 million for general damages, $25 million for previous health insurance payments, $92 million for unused vacation days, and $4.5 million in an additional reserve fund. The payments will be distributed to roughly 200,000 home health aides in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County. On average, workers will receive $680 from the settlement, which amounts to more than a week’s payment for many home health aides. Around 50,000 workers will receive more, between $1,000 and $1,800, from the settlement.
The transition to PPL as the fiscal intermediary for the CDPAP came with significant challenges. Renee Christian, a community advocate with New York Caring Majority, an organization made up of people with disabilities, older adults and home care workers, said that she has lost several aides as a result of the challenging transition to PPL.
In a separate suit filed last month, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged that “PPL created an artificially attractive proposal by making repeated material misrepresentations in its bid regarding the nature and amounts of costs that it would charge to administer the program.”
The DOJ lawsuit filed on June 16, 2026 alleges that PPL misrepresented its ability to conduct the transition effectively and on time. The suit alleges that by PPL hiring temporary employees to assist patients with enrollment, but failing to adequately train them, many callers faced long wait times and ended up hanging up before registering.
The lawsuit claims that, “because of PPL’s botched and dysfunctional transition, CDPAP patients have experienced disrupted care and lost their chosen caregivers— including caregivers who had cared for them for years and with whom they shared strong bonds of trust.”
Additionally, the DOJ lawsuit alleges that PPL has extracted profits from direct care costs through hourly rates. The lawsuit reads, “Because CDPAP bills approximately 350 million hours of care to New York each year, even taking a few cents per hour as revenue would mean tens of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.” Analysis attached to an email from a PPL vice president to a PPL executive showed that PPL could pocket up to 20% to 35% of the difference between CDPAP plan rates for caregiver per-hour compensation and caregiver wages.
As states face growing pressure to implement new Medicaid requirements that depend on complex eligibility systems and frequent verification checks, states may be incentivized to outsource that work to third party middlemen like PPL. The growing role of private equity in public health infrastructure calls for an increasing need for oversight and accountability, as outlined in PESP’s May 2026 Middlemen in Medicaid report.
