The coronavirus pandemic exposed a fundamental imbalance in New York’s approach to health policy: Albany spends too much money on its bloated Medicaid plan but neglects the public-health programs that used to be the Health Department’s main focus — such as controlling disease outbreaks and keeping nursing-home and hospital patients safe.
The state overregulates and excessively taxes commercial health insurance, meanwhile, saddling New Yorkers with some of the highest premiums in the continental United States — and pushing more people onto Medicaid.
Especially counterproductive is the state’s practice of financing Medicaid in part through billions in surcharges on commercial health plans, an approach that exacerbates the problem it’s meant to solve.
Read the full commentary in the New York Post. Adapted from “The Next New York: Renewing and Reforming the Empire State,” a project of the Empire Center at NextNewYork.net.
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