Should New Yorkers -- and Americans generally -- provide government-financed health coverage for undocumented immigrants? Making a case for yes is the president and CEO of the New York State Health Foundation, David Sandman, in an op-ed today for the Huffington Post. Read More
New York’s health plans are pressing for dramatically higher premiums in 2017, a sign of financial turbulence in the insurance markets for individuals and small businesses as the Affordable Care Act enters its seventh year. Read More
Twenty-nine of the 37 districts that sought to override the property tax cap were successful in yesterday’s school budget votes, as the majority of districts elected to limit their tax increases to the cap itself. Read More
The SUNY Polytechnic subsidiary at the center of a federal probe into the Buffalo Billion initiative may have violated the state Labor Law to steer construction jobs to area unions. Read More
A state oversight board this week is set to green-light a $486 million payment to the SUNY Polytechnic real estate subsidiary that is at the heart of the federal probe into Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion initiative. Read More
A study by researchers in the state Health Deparments, just published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, documents widespread use of prescription opioids in New York. Read More
Hillary Clinton’s endorsement of a Medicare “buy-in” for older Americans who are under 65 raises the question of whether it would actually be a good deal for the people it is supposed to help. Read More
Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli just issued a set of fiscal reform proposals designed to address the continuing lack of accountability and transparency in key areas of New York's budget. While by no means representing a fiscal panacea, they are solid ideas, deserving of broad public and legislative support. Read More
Albany’s practice of doling out millions in “bullet aid” to certain school districts at the behest of favored legislators has become a familiar ritual of pork-barrel politics. But a little-noticed provision of this year’s budget directs $30 million to a single nursing home in the Bronx, which is unusual even by the standards of New York State government. Read More
New York's 2 percent local property tax levy cap has passed another important legal test, prevailing in the state's mid-level appeals court over a constitutional challenge from the state's largest teachers' union. Read More
Governor Cuomo’s $15 minimum wage plan will cost the state’s Medicaid program more than $100 million over the next two years, according to figures in a budget analysis released Wednesday by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. Read More
Whether they know it or not, New York State taxpayers are locked in a high-stakes partnership with a billionaire whose high-tech business empire has been "fueled by his voracious appetite for risk and unyielding confidence." Read More