Believe it or not, New Yorkers, your health benefits got a little bit cheaper last year. Unfortunately, they’re still among the costliest in the country. Read More
Research
Opioid prescribing rates vary widely across New York, with residents in some counties receiving three or four times as much of the potentially addictive pain relievers as in other counties. Read More
Insurance tax credits in the U.S. Senate GOP’s health plan would have a mixed effect on New Yorkers, reducing net premiums for some young, low-income consumers shopping in the non-group market, but raising costs for older ones. Read More
New York would pay a price for running a high-cost Medicaid program if the Senate GOP health plan becomes law. Read More
Over the past three years, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reaped an unprecedented windfall of more than $10 billion in fines and penalties paid by major financial institutions for violating various state and federal banking laws. Coming virtually out of the blue, the windfall represented a unique opportunity to get ahead of the state’s most pressing problems — including but not limited to those of the transit system. It’s an opportunity Cuomo has mostly squandered. Read More
The U.S. Senate GOP’s health bill, though pitched as more moderate than the House plan, would be harder on New York in at least one respect. Read More
Compared to national and statewide averages, rural counties in upstate New York have a much larger share of residents aged 65 and older, the latest Census Bureau estimates show. The 65+ population was 15.3 percent of the U.S. total as of mid-2016, according to census data released today. The Empire State as a whole was just a hair above the national average, with 15.4 percent of New Yorkers falling into the age category that demographers generally tag as elderly. Read More
The makers of the anti-addiction drug Vivitrol – whose controversial nationwide lobbying campaign was spotlighted by the New York Times last week – appear to be getting results in Albany. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo sprang his announcement of a five-year contract agreement with state's largest union on Tuesday afternoon— the last possible moment to win legislative approval of the deal so checks can start going out to union members. But he released absolutely no details of what he was about to ask lawmakers to approve before they end their session today. Read More
By an overwhelming margin, the state Assembly has approved a bill designed to partially inoculate New York’s government unions against a potential U.S. Supreme Court ruling ending the unions’ ability to extract dues-like “fees” from employees. Read More
State legislators have taken their mania for insurance mandates to a new extreme: They’ve passed a bill that arguably accomplishes nothing other than covering unnecessary mammograms. Read More
Before voting to mandate insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization, state lawmakers should think through what such a rule would accomplish, how much it would cost, and who would pay the bill. Read More