Despite a concentration of world-famous hospitals in Manhattan, New York’s overall hospital industry ranks at or near the bottom on a range of performance benchmarks measuring quality, efficiency, financial health and equality of access, an Empire Center study has found. Read More
Our latest scan of pending health insurance mandates identified 120 bills, an increase of 29, or almost one-third, since Mandate Watch was inaugurated in March 2017. Read More
Health coverage gains under the Affordable Care Act were concentrated where they were needed most—among lower-income groups and in the five boroughs of New York City—recently released Census Bureau data show. Read More
Manhattan’s world-famous institutions notwithstanding, New York’s hospitals collectively rate as below-average on benchmarks of quality, accessibility, efficiency and cost. What can be done to improve the Empire State’s dismal hospital perfo Read More
From 2014 to 2016, New York’s Medicaid program saw a surge in drug spending that Governor Andrew Cuomo blamed on “abusive” behavior by drug manufacturers. A new Empire Center issue brief shows that, after accounting for rebates, the surge was smaller than Cuomo described, and that it was mostly driven by enrollment growth. Overall, the report finds that price increases accounted for about one-fifth of the spending surge, while enrollment accounted for four-fifths. Read More
Now that the state budget is put to bed for another year, here is a non-comprehensive rundown of health care-related highlights and lowlights. Read More
The largest revenue-raiser in the just-completed state budget, worth $2 billion over four years, is not a tax or a fee or even a legal settlement. It takes the form of semi-voluntary “grants,” mostly to be squeezed out of a Catholic Church-affiliated health plan. Read More
Governor Cuomo’s proposal to expropriate “excess” reserves from Medicaid managed care plans would apparently target just two insurers—Fidelis Care and MetroPlus—even though their reserve levels are not unusually high. Read More