New York Health Act Receives Approval in State Assembly

American Health Care Act in the House of Representatives makes it important for the state of New York to preserve affordable healthcare for its residents. A professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Gerald Friedman, did an analysis in 2015 that showed a potential savings of $45 billion in the first year of the bill’s implementation. However, Avik Roy, the president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a Texas think tank, did an analysis that concluded Friedman’s findings were largely incorrect. Instead, Roy said the bill would require $226 billion in tax increases, quadrupling the state tax burden. The director of health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, Bill Hammond, has questioned whether the bill is based more on ideological beliefs rather than on how its policies would work in practice. Regardless of the differing opinions on the New York Health Act, the next step is to see how the bill fares in the Senate.