Private equity’s growing influence is reshaping everyday life for New Yorkers – starting with soaring rents driven by corporate-owned housing, a fact that Gov. Kathy Hochul acknowledged in her state of the state this year. These firms are expanding their reach into another essential service: our doctor’s offices. Fortunately, New York has a powerful tool to help protect our independent healthcare system: The Medicaid Managed Care Quality Incentive Program.
Across the country, private equity firms have been rapidly acquiring independent medical practices. Over the past decade, their ownership of physician groups has surged, particularly in specialties like primary care, dermatology, and orthopedics. What happens next is predictable: costs rise, patient care suffers, and doctors face relentless pressure to prioritize profits over people. If we don’t act now, independent medical providers – especially those serving Medicaid patients – will continue to disappear, leaving private equity-owned practices as the only option. Medicaid QIP can help to prevent this outcome.
The Medicaid QIP is a state-funded program that provides vital funding to ensure independent providers can stay afloat and continue delivering proactive, high-quality care. But for years, it has been underfunded, and that is a risk again this year. It’s critical that Gov. Hochul and my colleagues in the Legislature fully fund and codify QIP in this year’s state budget to prevent private equity from taking more of our healthcare system…