The proposed New York Health Act, legislation that would offer a state-run, one-payer health insurance program, drew wide-ranging criticism at a recent discussion sponsored by the Empire Center. Read More
Tag: Single payer
One new aspect of the bill is a dispute resolution process for negotiating fees with providers. The process would involve, if necessary, the appointment of a three-member fact finding panel to advise the health commissioner. Such a process could hinder the state’s ability to control costs, which is critical to making the plan feasible, said Bill Hammond, director of health policy at the Empire Center in Albany. Read More
New revisions to a proposed single-payer health plan for New York State would add tens of billions dollars to the already enormous price tag – and further hinder the state's ability to control costs going forward. Read More
Bill Hammond, with the fiscal watchdog group the Empire Center, says there are a lot of unintended consequences that could result from a single-payer system in New York, including reduced revenues for hospitals, and the need for as much as $139 billion in new taxes, according to a study by the Rand Corporation. "There’s a lot of misconceptions about how single-payer works, there’s a lot of wishful thinking about how much money would be saved and how much better things would be," Hammond said. "That’s not to defend the current system, there’s a lot of things that are wrong with the current system." Read More
It’s hard to take Medicare for All seriously when its proponents keep saying deeply unserious things. The latest case in point comes from Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive firebrand from the Bronx. Read More
The New York City Council's vote of support on Tuesday for a statewide single-payer health plan showed curious timing from a fiscal point of view. Two weeks before, sponsors of the New York Health Act told union officials that they were changing the bill in ways that could cost the city billions of dollars per year. Details of these high-stakes changes won't be available until next month, yet Council members chose to back the measure anyway – effectively endorsing a blank check. Read More
The already extraordinary cost of a proposed state-run single-payer health plan jumped even higher this week when the chief sponsor, Assembly Health Chairman Richard Gottfried of Manhattan, announced that it would be expanded to cover long-term care. Read More
The latest too-good-to-be-true argument for single-payer comes from Albany City Treasurer Darius Shahinfar, who claims that a government-funded statewide health plan would dramatically reduce property taxes. In reality, the savings for local taxpayers, if any, would likely be a fraction of what Shahinfar estimates. And they would come at the cost of the largest increase in state taxes that New York has ever seen, not to mention wholesale disruption of the entire health-care system. Read More