New York is the only state in the country that forces its counties to share Medicaid costs, despite those counties having no control over the program. In the 57 counties outside New York City, these costs eat up an average of 40% of the property tax revenue.

Lax rules and poor oversight from Albany have pushed our state and county governments to the breaking point. New York spends as much on Medicaid as Texas and Pennsylvania combined and at S3,054 per capita, New York spends 76% above the national average and is the highest in the nation. Sadly, these costs not only have not resulted in better care for patients, the federal government currently ranks the quality of New York State’s hospitals the lowest in the country.

There is an urgent need address regulations that bury doctors in paperwork. Three national studies found that doctors are spending as much as half their day filing Electronic Medical Records (EMR), twice the amount they are spending with patients. EMRs have been made incredibly cumbersome with extra layers of complexity as the state, insurance companies and hospital administrators add new regulations. In 2018 alone, 133 mandate bills were introduced in the New York legislature. While each may have been presented to help patients, the result is a system that does the opposite.

SAM candidates will tackle our cumbersome regulations head-on in order to reduce our healthcare costs and improve the quality of care New Yorkers receive.