One of the key promises behind President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act is that it would "bend the curve" of increasing health care costs. The fact that the nation's overall health spending has been growing at the relatively slow rate of 4 percent annually is a hopeful sign. But all is not so calm in the part of the insurance industry most directly affected by the ACA — the individual and small-group markets. Read More
Remember the three-day New York City transit strike of December 2005? If you do, you must be imagining things—because, according to an official legislative filing by Assemblyman Peter Abbate, Jr. of Brooklyn, there hasn't been a transit work stoppage in the city since 1989. Read More
Should New Yorkers -- and Americans generally -- provide government-financed health coverage for undocumented immigrants? Making a case for yes is the president and CEO of the New York State Health Foundation, David Sandman, in an op-ed today for the Huffington Post. Read More
New York’s health plans are pressing for dramatically higher premiums in 2017, a sign of financial turbulence in the insurance markets for individuals and small businesses as the Affordable Care Act enters its seventh year. Read More
Twenty-nine of the 37 districts that sought to override the property tax cap were successful in yesterday’s school budget votes, as the majority of districts elected to limit their tax increases to the cap itself. Read More
Seven years since the end of the Great Recession, and five years since Andrew Cuomo took office as governor, New York state’s economy is in splendid shape. That’s what the state’s ubiquitous “Open for Business” ad campaign would imply, at any rate. The facts tell a different story. Read More
The SUNY Polytechnic subsidiary at the center of a federal probe into the Buffalo Billion initiative may have violated the state Labor Law to steer construction jobs to area unions. Read More
A state oversight board this week is set to green-light a $486 million payment to the SUNY Polytechnic real estate subsidiary that is at the heart of the federal probe into Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion initiative. Read More
From Albany to Buffalo, the New York governor’s clubby approach to economic development invites—and deserves—scrutiny. Read More
A study by researchers in the state Health Deparments, just published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, documents widespread use of prescription opioids in New York. Read More
Hillary Clinton’s endorsement of a Medicare “buy-in” for older Americans who are under 65 raises the question of whether it would actually be a good deal for the people it is supposed to help. Read More
Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli just issued a set of fiscal reform proposals designed to address the continuing lack of accountability and transparency in key areas of New York's budget. While by no means representing a fiscal panacea, they are solid ideas, deserving of broad public and legislative support. Read More