Bill Hammond

Senior Fellow for Health Policy

As the Empire Center’s senior fellow for health policy, Bill Hammond tracks fast-moving developments in New York’s massive health care industry, with a focus on how decisions made in Albany and Washington affect the well-being of patients, providers, taxpayers and the state’s economy.

Bill has authored reports critiquing a proposed state-run single-payer health care system, documenting Albany’s excessive reliance on health insurance taxes, analyzing the pros and cons of “block-granting” Medicaid, and examining the regulatory missteps surrounding the collapse of Health Republic Insurance.

He also published numerous op-eds and contributes regularly to NY Torch, the Empire Center’s policy blog.

Before joining the Empire Center in 2016, Bill spent almost three decades in newspaper journalism, most recently as a columnist and editorial board member at the New York Daily News from 2005 to 2015.

Before joining the Daily News, Hammond previously wrote for The New York Sun, The Daily Gazette of Schenectady and The Post-Star of Glens Falls. His work has also appeared in Politico New York, the New York Post, City & State, the Albany Times Union, The Buffalo News and The 74.

A graduate of Albany High School and Harvard University, Hammond lives in Saratoga Springs.

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Latest Work

FY2021 NYS Budget – Health Care and Medicaid

The main thing wrong with Governor Cuomo’s Medicaid budget is that it barely exists. His executive budget proposes to reduce funding for the state’s biggest and most important program by 10 percent, or $2.5 billion, but omits any plan for making that happen. Instead, the governor is delegating details to a panel of industry insiders who haven’t yet been named and don’t have a clear deadline. Read More

Unanswered Medicaid questions

Wednesday's hearing on the governor's Medicaid budget gives lawmakers a chance to learn more from top officials about how the program developed its $4 billion deficit. Here are some suggested questions. Read More

Cuomo stalls on Medicaid

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s response to the Empire State’s big Medicaid deficit, as laid out in his budget presentation on Tuesday, was a disappointing mix of delay, deflection and delegation. Read More

Albany’s Self-Inflicted Medicaid Crisis

In 2020, the biggest headache facing Albany will be Medicaid, the state-run health plan that covers more than 6 million lower-income and disabled New Yorkers. As revealed last month, Medicaid is running 16 percent over budget—opening a $4 billion deficit in the state’s current financial plan and contributing disproportionately to a $6.1 billion gap for the fiscal year that begins April 1. Read More

Putting a Medicaid cut in context

In the coming skirmish over how to close a multi-billion-dollar deficit in the Medicaid program, New Yorkers can expect a lot of misleading claims and half-truths from the health-care industry. A case in point is a Jan. 6 letter signed by 23 provider groups – representing hospitals, nursing homes, pharmacies, physicians and more – which calls for Governor Cuomo to reverse the 1 percent cut to most Medicaid fees that his administration announced on New Year's Eve. Read More