In a letter to governors two days after President Biden's inauguration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that the pandemic-related federal public health emergency "will likely remain in place for the entirety of 2021." Read More
Latest Work
After a report from New York Attorney General Letitia James confirmed suspicions of under-reporting the official record of COVID-19 nursing home deaths, counsel for the Empire Center submitted a letter to the Albany County Supreme Court renewing its urgent Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. Read More
The most shocking thing about state Attorney General Letitia James’ report on the coronavirus pandemic in New York nursing homes is what it did not contain: a definitive count of how many thousands of residents have died of COVID. Apparently, not even the highest-ranking legal official in the state was able to pry that elusive number out of the Cuomo administration’s clutches. Read More
The Cuomo administration's resistance to sharing pandemic data from nursing homes has broadened to withholding vaccination numbers as well as full death counts. Read More
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Governor Cuomo's Medicaid budget is how little it changes the program's spending pattern. In spite of a once-in-century pandemic that rocked the state's health-care system and decimated state revenues, the g Read More
The two top priorities Governor Cuomo identified in his State of the State speech Monday morning were "Defeat COVID" and "Vaccinate New York." Read More
Going on four weeks into what should have been a mass vaccination program, it's increasingly clear that the Cuomo administration did not have – and does not have – an adequate plan for immunizing 20 million New Yor Read More
After second-guessing the FDA with its own vaccine task force, the Cuomo administration is declining to share even basic information about that panel's approval process until mid-February. Read More