New York's largest public pension fund earned 2 percent in its first fiscal quarter—which isn't necessarily good or bad news for taxpayers. Read More
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By going along with double-digit premium hikes for individual-market health plans, the state is loosening handcuffs that should not exist. Read More
Taxpayer-funded pension contributions in New York City will need to increase by a total of $732 million between fiscal years 2018 and 2020 due to the pension funds' paltry investment earnings in the recently concluded 2016 fiscal year, City Comptroller Scott Stringer has just disclosed. Read More
New York’s hospitals collectively rank dead last among the 50 states in a new report card from the federal government, an Empire Center analysis shows. Read More
Here’s a puzzling statistic: Recipients enrolled in Medicaid managed care plans use emergency rooms more often, not less, than those in the old-style “fee for service” program. Read More
A study charges that Medicaid managed care plans are systematically denying care to elderly and disabled shut-ins. While the report raises concerns, its findings do not warrant abandoning an important reform effort. Read More
Upstate New York's largest metro areas experienced little or no job growth during the year ending in June, according to the latest state Labor Department employment report. Read More
For several years now, Governor Andrew Cuomo has been misusing employment statistics to back up claims that his policies have ignited an economic resurgence in upstate New York. It happened yet again today, when the governor was in Binghamton to announce that Dick's Sporting Goods had decided to locate a 650,000 square foot distribution center in the Broome County Corporate Park. Read More
After another year of low inflation, most local governments will again base their tax caps on a growth factor of less than one percent. Read More
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli accentuates the negative in a new audit of the state’s Medicaid managed care program, faulting two participating insurers for “wasting millions of state Medicaid dollars.” But he omits two important pieces of context. Read More
New York emerged as the second-costliest state for employer-sponsored health insurance after its premiums rose at more than three times the national rate in 2015. Read More
The best news to come out of the final days of the 2016 legislative session may have concerned what didn’t pass. Read More