Commentary

Proponents of a single-payer health plan for New York pitch it as a cure-all — one fix that would achieve universal coverage, let people to go to any doctor or hospital, abolish copays and deductibles, cut down on paperwork, and save billions in the bargain. Forty-five billion dollars, to be precise — or so said Assembly Health Chairman Richard Gottfried of Manhattan, as the Democrat-controlled lower house passed his New York Health Act on June 1. It sounds too good to be true because it is. My analysis for the Empire Center shows that his $45 billion savings estimate relies on tendentious assumptions, debatable methods and a heavy dose of wishful thinking. Read More

During the first few years after Wall Street prices bottomed out in 2009, public-pension funds across the country reaped double-digit returns. They were riding a bull market pumped up by ultra-low interest rates, and it wouldn’t last. Now pension managers have been struggling to break even — the predictable outcome of a funding strategy that continues to expose taxpayers to unreasonable long-term risks. Read More

Call it pig in a blanket. Gov. Cuomo and state legislative leaders have brought pork back big-time, wrapped in a dense layer of bureaucracy and with a side of alphabet-soup misdirection. Read More

One of the key promises behind President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act is that it would "bend the curve" of increasing health care costs. The fact that the nation's overall health spending has been growing at the relatively slow rate of 4 percent annually is a hopeful sign. But all is not so calm in the part of the insurance industry most directly affected by the ACA — the individual and small-group markets. Read More

Seven years since the end of the Great Recession, and five years since Andrew Cuomo took office as governor, New York state’s economy is in splendid shape. That’s what the state’s ubiquitous “Open for Business” ad campaign would imply, at any rate. The facts tell a different story. Read More

From Albany to Buffalo, the New York governor’s clubby approach to economic development invites—and deserves—scrutiny. Read More

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has promised — loudly, proudly and publicly — that New York state will overspend on public works projects. Read More

New York under Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been able to tame Medicaid costs by bringing together service providers and health care unions to find ways to save money. But Medicaid patients themselves can also play a bigger role in that process. Read More

New York's new state budget includes the biggest permanent "middle class" income tax cut in 20 years. Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature can pay for it by restraining spending and enacting more tax reform. Read More

The budget adopted by New York’s Legislature last week was described by Gov. Cuomo as “the best plan that the state has produced . . . in decades, literally.” If this is truly the “best” New York can do, we’re in even more trouble than we thought. Read More

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's guest commentary on his proposed minimum wage increase was filled with the sort of misinformation and half-truths that have propelled the "fight for $15" for months now. Read More

New York has seldom seen an executive initiative as politically radical or economically reckless as Gov. Cuomo’s proposal for a $15-per-hour statewide minimum wage. Read More