At the midway point of the fiscal year, New York's Medicaid health plan has already spent 61 percent of its state-funded budget, according to the latest cash report from the comptroller's office – putting the program on track to end the year with a $2.9 billion shortfall. Read More
When it comes to New York’s latest Medicaid mess, the buck stops with Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Read More
The budget crisis in New York’s Medicaid program stems from the failure of a key cost-control measure adopted during Governor Cuomo’s first term. In 2011, Cuomo and the Legislature imposed a “global cap” on state Medicaid spending that was tied to the medical inflation rate. The measure showed signs of working at first, but lost its effectiveness as circumstances changed, loopholes multiplied and compliance faltered. Read More
Federal officials are reviewing the state's expropriation of $2 billion from the sale of Fidelis Care health plan, potentially throwing a wrench into the Cuomo administration's plans for using the money. Read More
A little-discussed hazard of creating a state-run single-payer health plan in New York would be its vulnerability to the business cycle. It would depend heavily on taxes collected from high-income New Yorkers, a source of revenue that's especially prone to booms and busts. A recession – or a downturn in the stock market – could easily open a budget hole not just in the billions of dollars, but in the tens of billions of dollars. Read More
Bucking the national trend, New York's uninsured rate dropped for the eighth consecutive year, new data from the Census Bureau show. The share of New Yorkers lacking health coverage in 2018 was 5.4 percent in 2018, down from 5.7 percent the year before. The number of people lacking health coverage dropped by about 72,000, to just over 1 million. Both the rate and the number are roughly half what they were in 2013, the year before the Affordable Care Act went into effect. Read More
Sen. Chuck Schumer raised the alarm Tuesday about a pending reduction in Medicaid funding for safety-net hospitals, which he said would have "devastating" effect in New York. His warning was misleading in several ways, not least because it left out an important bit of context: Schumer himself voted for the cuts he was deploring. In effect, he was taking credit for trying to clean up a mess he had helped to create. Read More
Is the Cuomo administration disclosing its payouts from the $2 billion Health Care Transformation Fund as required law? You be the judge. Read More