Ideas for major Medicaid reforms are "bubbling up around the country," and New York might learn from other states that provide high-quality care at lower cost, according to the Public Policy Institute's latest Medicaid Watch '05 briefing paper.
The briefing paper, Other states move boldly to reform Medicaid; why shouldn't New York?, points to South Carolina and Florida as two states that are considering especially innovative approaches to taxpayer-funded health care
New York’s state and local government employees collect higher
retirement benefits while contributing less than those in other states,
according to a Public Policy Institute analysis of new data from the U.S.
Census Bureau.
State and local government employees in New York collected an average
$11,882 in 2003, some 42 percent above the national average, according
to the Institute
Despite per-pupil school spending that is the nation’s
second highest, New York’s return on that investment
is notably below average by two key measures of school success,
recent research by the Manhattan Institute suggests.
All 50 states’ academic outcomes were evaluated by
two common and critical measures of school success, graduation
rates and “college readiness” rates, according
to the institute’s report, Public
High School Graduation and College-Readiness Rates: 1991–2002
New York State falls behind many other states in national rankings of health, and must do more to analyze what its $45 billion Medicaid program does to improve quality of care, The Public Policy Institute's latest Medicaid Watch '05 report says.
"Medicaid spending is higher in New York than anywhere else," the report says
Albany's Health Care Reform Act and other Medicaid reforms
slowed the growth in hospital spending in the 1990s, but the
growth is back, a new Public Policy Institute report shows.
"The original HCRA was a major step toward higher-quality
and more affordable health care for New Yorkers," the
Institute's latest Medicaid Watch '05 report says
Some of the New York State Power Authority’s (NYPA)
economic power programs may be in jeopardy if the legislature
doesn’t change the wording in the law that governs NYPA’s
power sources.
The statute names Fitzpatrick Nuclear as the power source
from which NYPA may purchase energy for economic energy programs,
like Power for Jobs
New York State's Medicaid spending on long-term care for older residents is well over twice the national average, and far higher than the level in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and other states, a Public Policy Institute report shows.
"Defenders of the status quo in New York's costly Medicaid program like to argue that if we spend less, we'll end up leaving our elderly loved ones out on the street," the Institute's latest Medicaid Watch '05 report says
In
a significant victory for New York’s business community,
state legislators today have agreed to adopt the single-sales
factor tax reform, a long-time priority of The Business Council.
The
state’s corporate taxes are now based on three factors:
in-state sales, payroll, and property
To cut Medicaid costs, New York must enact reforms that control
Medicaid spending in hospitals, according to the fourth report
in the Public Policy Institute’s Medicaid Watch
'05 series.
“Hospital spending represents the biggest single disparity
between Medicaid spending in New York and in our competitor
states,” according to the report, which was released
today