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

Cuomo’s $1.7B Medicaid mulligan

This year's state budget came with a hidden asterisk: In the final throes of his negotiations with legislative leaders, Governor Cuomo quietly postponed a month's worth of Medicaid payments from the last week of March to the first week of April – shifting $1.7 billion in spending from one fiscal year to the next. Read More

Gillibrand’s Medicare muddle

At Thursday night's Democratic presidential debate, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand gave a misleading description of the "Medicare for All" proposal that she says she helped to write – implying that it calls for a voluntary buy-in rather than mandatory government coverage. Read More

A rush to regulate PBMs

In the name of lowering drug costs, state lawmakers are on the brink of passing hastily drafted and ill-considered legislation that would risk driving those costs even higher. Read More

Pension woes for 1199

Two pension funds affiliated with 1199 SEIU, the state's largest and most influential union for  health-care workers, recently disclosed that they are in critical status due to funding or liquidity problems for an 11th straight year. Read More

Testimony: New York Health Act Public Hearing

If ever a piece of legislation warranted thorough vetting, in full public view, it’s a bill that would compel 20 million people to switch health plans, abolish tens of thousands of jobs, upend a sixth of the economy and levy the largest tax increase in the history of this or any other state. Read More

Essential Plan surplus hits $1.2B

The balance of unspent money in the Essential Plan Trust Fund ballooned to a new high of $1.2 billion as of March 31, records from the comptroller's office show. The surplus more than tripled since the same time last year – even as the Trump administration disrupted federal aid for the program, which provides health coverage to low-income New Yorkers, and the Cuomo administration diverted $635 million in Essential Plan funds to subsidize struggling hospitals. Read More