Believe it or not, New Yorkers, your health benefits got a little bit cheaper last year. Unfortunately, they’re still among the costliest in the country. Read More
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Opioid prescribing rates vary widely across New York, with residents in some counties receiving three or four times as much of the potentially addictive pain relievers as in other counties. Read More
Insurance tax credits in the U.S. Senate GOP’s health plan would have a mixed effect on New Yorkers, reducing net premiums for some young, low-income consumers shopping in the non-group market, but raising costs for older ones. Read More
Former Assembly member Richard Brodsky and the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon have sent a joint letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo, legislative leaders and the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), urging the state to redirect up to $4 billion in unspent financial penalty settlement funds to help finance desperately needed subway repairs as well as highway and bridge work. Read More
New York would pay a price for running a high-cost Medicaid program if the Senate GOP health plan becomes law. Read More
Over the past three years, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reaped an unprecedented windfall of more than $10 billion in fines and penalties paid by major financial institutions for violating various state and federal banking laws. Coming virtually out of the blue, the windfall represented a unique opportunity to get ahead of the state’s most pressing problems — including but not limited to those of the transit system. It’s an opportunity Cuomo has mostly squandered. Read More
A $500,000 grant to support a solar-powered carousel in Buffalo—raising that project’s total taxpayer subsidy to more than $1 million—was among the 1,782 local pork barrel projects awarded grants by state lawmakers in the final hours of their 2017 regular session. Read More
The 48,346-employee payroll of New York City’s fiscally stressed Health and Hospitals Corporation swelled to $2.9 billion last year, a 16 percent jump from $2.5 billion in 2014, according to data added today to SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Read More