Healthcare

Republican Cuts to the Essential Plan Could Cost New York Over $10 Billion a Year

While most coverage of the Republican reconciliation proposals has focused on Medicaid, the largest financial impact on New York’s healthcare system comes from another program – the Essential Plan. The current House Republican budget proposal threatens to cut the program by $7.6 billion or 57 percent, while increasing state Medicaid costs by $2.7 billion.

2025-05-22T00:45:04-04:00May 22nd, 2025|Healthcare, Policy & Research|

The House Medicaid Proposal Would be a Disaster for New York

In February, Congressional Republicans – including all seven New York representatives – voted for a budget reconciliation package requiring $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next ten years. The reconciliation package set an overall target for spending reductions, but didn’t announce what specifically would be cut from the program. This week, House leadership finally revealed which program areas will be targeted.

2025-05-15T12:47:14-04:00May 15th, 2025|Blog, Healthcare|

How the CDPAP Transition Could Leave Thousands of Home Care Workers Uninsured

The statewide transition to PPL on April 1 risks being a catastrophe for home care workers – lowering wages while eliminating health insurance coverage for tens or even hundreds of thousands of workers. Neither PPL nor the state has offered any explanation of why this is happening or what PPL intends to do about it; many workers are currently seeking information about whether they will still have health insurance on April 1.

2025-03-25T14:06:57-04:00March 17th, 2025|Featured on Home, Healthcare|

What to Expect in the Budget: Healthcare

Healthcare didn’t take center stage in Governor Hochul’s State of the State address this week, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be central to New York politics this session. After all, rising healthcare costs are a key component of the affordability crisis squeezing New Yorkers, with premiums for individual and small-group health insurance set to increase by 12.7 percent this year.

2025-01-19T10:55:58-05:00January 19th, 2025|Healthcare, State Budget|

The Staffing Crisis in Upstate Hospitals

FPI today released a report by Dr. Emily Eisner on the staffing crisis in Upstate New York's hospitals. The report finds that 90 percent of Upstate hospital shifts are current understaffed, and that an additional 5,000 Registered Nurses and 20,000 ancillary staff are needed to achieve safe staffing levels. As the report shows, chronic understaffing leads to a 14 percent rise in mortality risk for patients on the worst 10 percent of hospital units—about 280 additional patients death for every 100,000 hospitalizations.

2024-12-20T00:09:59-05:00December 16th, 2024|Healthcare, Must Read, Policy & Research, Social Policy|

Making Sense of New York’s Medicaid Long-Term Care Spending

New York spends more on Medicaid long-term care than most states, but this higher spending is driven primarily by higher enrollment, particularly among seniors, rather than by higher per-enrollee spending. This high enrollment reflects policymakers’ decision to make long-term care, particularly home care, relatively accessible for working- and middle-class seniors.

2024-12-20T00:17:18-05:00December 4th, 2024|Blog, Featured on Home, Healthcare, Social Policy|

The Medicaid MCO Tax Strategy

The legislative one-house budgets come out firmly for higher Medicaid spending, restoring most of the governor’s cuts and offering significant rate increases. But how will they pay for it? The Senate and Assembly budget memos propose to raise $4 billion a year through an obscure mechanism: A tax on Medicaid managed care plans, the private insurance companies which administer most of the state’s Medicaid program.

Go to Top