The Impact of a Single Payer Health Plan on New York Taxes

A new report from the Empire Center for Public Policy breaks down the impact an Albany-run Single Payer health care system would have on state taxes and both the overall economy and health care system.

Single Payer would lead to an unprecedented tax hike on New Yorker individuals and businesses. These are the main areas of impact as identified in the report:

• The necessary tax hike would likely be the largest ever enacted by any state.
• New York’s tax burden, already high, would become an extreme outlier.
• Some people might save money, but others would pay substantially more.
• The incentives for tax migration would balloon to unprecedented levels.
• Even a small amount of migration would decimate the tax base.
• Health funding would become more vulnerable to booms and busts.
• Rising medical costs would create pressure for further tax hikes.

“The New York Health Act requires a tax hike massive enough to disrupt the state’s entire economy, yet the bill’s authors have provided none of the details necessary to fully analyze the impact,” said report author Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center. “It should be unthinkable that lawmakers would enact single-payer without clearly stating what it would cost and where the money would come from.”

Hammond’s report does not take into account the increase in taxes from inclusion of long-term care. View our analysis of that here. Including long-term care, state taxes would need to increase at least $250 billion per year to help pay for a government-run Single Payer system.