New York State can save money and improve health outcomes in its $54 billion Medicaid program by giving patients more incentive to “take ownership” of their own healthcare, according to a new report released today by the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More
New York State has embarked on an ambitious multi-year effort to overhaul its taxpayer-funded Medicaid program, which has long combined high costs with less than impressive health outcomes. Governor Andrew Cuomo’s “redesign” of Medicaid will be heavily focused on “complex, high-cost populations” – the roughly one million Medicaid recipients with long-term disabilities and chronic health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, substance abuse and mental illness. Read More
Don’t look now, but a quick deal to sidestep the federal government’s fiscal cliff could end up pushing New York state to the edge of its own precipice. Yet top New York officials seem oblivious to a wave of federal tax hikes due to hit the state’s tax base as soon as next month. Read More
Twenty-nine days past the legal deadline, the Cuomo Administration finally got around to posting the state’s required mid-year financial plan update on the Division of the Budget (DOB) website late yesterday afternoon. As expected, the report does not included an estimate of fiscal impacts from Superstorm Sandy. DOB says it is still working on those numbers. Read More
For a second straight year, Governor Andrew Cuomo has fallen behind the schedule for releasing the required quarterly update to the state financial plan. And for a second straight year, the governor can’t come up with a persuasive reason for the delay. Read More
New York operates the largest network of programs for the poor in the nation. It serves more than 5 million Medicaid clients at a cost of $54 billion annually. Read More
One year ago, as Andrew Cuomo was about to wrap up his first year in the New York governor's office, the governor and state legislative leaders agreed on a series of personal income tax provisions they described in a joint news release as "fair tax reform that achieves the first major restructuring of the tax code in decades." Read More
It’s no secret that most members of the New York State Legislature would like to vote themselves an increase in their $79,500 base pay. Under the state Constitution, however, they can only approve a pay raise effective with a future legislative term. And if they don’t act before midnight on Dec. 31, when the current term ends, they’ll have to wait another two years. Read More