Let’s Protect and Continue New York’s Progress Toward Health Equity

Every New Yorker deserves access to affordable, high-quality health care. Yet, for too many of our neighbors, it isn’t as easy as it should be. New Yorkers in low-income and historically underserved neighborhoods face barriers to getting the care they need, even though they are more likely to have chronic diseases like diabetes and asthma and have higher rates of certain cancers. How do we tackle these disparities? By holding health plans like mine accountable for results.

Twenty-five years ago, health care quality for a New Yorker with Medicaid was starkly worse than it was for people covered by commercial health insurance. To bridge this gap, New York created the Medicaid Managed Care Quality Incentive Program (QIP), which rates all Medicaid plans on the quality of care their members receive. Did members get their mammograms or colorectal cancer screenings on time? If someone is at risk of or has diabetes, is their blood sugar controlled? Did children receive their early developmental screenings and necessary preventive care? And so on for a host of other evidence-based, nationally recognized quality measures. QIP measures and rewards health plans based on quality of care and member experience benchmarks. Medicaid plans that don’t perform well don’t get rewarded.

The Medicaid plan that I lead – Healthfirst – covers one third of downstate New York’s Medicaid population and has been a top QIP performer for many years. Why? Because we reinvest our QIP bonuses in our hard-working physician, health center and hospital partners who deliver timely critical services like prenatal care, cancer screenings, asthma management and behavioral health support. Providers who do a good job earn incentives funded by our QIP earnings, which many use to improve access and care for their patients, for example by offering evening and weekend hours for working families, reaching patients through outreach programs or expanding mental health support.

Our QIP awards allow us to pay providers for quality and provide needed support like data feeds and coordination to create a continuous loop of quality improvement for New York’s most vulnerable populations. By incentivizing Medicaid plans to prioritize proactive, high-quality care, QIP has become a cornerstone of narrowing health disparities in New York state, and the state Department of Health has found that since it was implemented, the gap in quality for Medicaid and commercial enrollees has steadily shrunk.

However, despite this progress, QIP funding has declined in recent years, even as more people have enrolled in Medicaid. While we are grateful that the governor’s 2026 fiscal year budget includes increased funding for QIP, it falls short of embedding full and sustainable quality funding into the Medicaid program to ensure preventive care for millions of New Yorkers.

New York has been a national leader in advancing healthcare access and making strides in equity but there is more work to be done. To continue New York’s legacy and to protect the health of underserved New Yorkers, I ask Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers to fully fund the Medicaid Managed Care Quality Incentive Program in the FY 2026 state budget. By protecting and fully funding the QIP, we can ensure that all New Yorkers – regardless of income, zip code or background – have access to the high-quality, proactive care they deserve.