Latest news with #ThomasDiNapoli
Politico
11 hours ago
- Health
- Politico
Health care staffing crisis hits New York rural counties
Good morning and welcome to the Weekly New York Health Care newsletter, where we keep you posted on what's coming up this week in health care news, and offer a look back at the important news from last week. Beat Memo Rural New York counties are facing 'alarming' shortages of primary care doctors, pediatricians, obstetricians and other health care professionals — and those workforce challenges will likely be exacerbated by looming federal funding cuts, according to a report released Thursday by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The comptroller's office reviewed the health care workforce in 16 rural counties across the state, finding practitioner shortages in every field, including dentistry and mental health, POLITICO's Katelyn Cordero reports. The report noted that ten of the 16 counties are federally designated as 'primary care health professional shortage areas,' meaning that the rate of primary care providers per capita is below state and national averages. 'Having access to health care is an essential quality of life issue and helps people live healthier lives,' DiNapoli, a Democrat, said in a statement. 'Addressing gaps in the rural healthcare workforce to alleviate current shortages and plan for future demand will not only positively impact the health of people living in less populated areas of New York, but could also create new jobs and bolster our rural economies,' he said. The report found that, on average, in the rural counties examined, there are four primary care physicians per 10,000 people. That's far below the state ratio of 8.1 per 10,000 and the national ratio of 8.4. Mental health was a particular concern highlighted in the report, with all 16 counties facing shortages of mental health practitioners. The ratio of mental health practitioners per capita in those counties is less than half of the state ratio. Recommendations to address shortages included in the report: The report comes at a time of great uncertainty for New York's health care industry, as the Trump administration implements Medicaid cuts that were part of the recently enacted GOP megabill, which many experts anticipate will disproportionately impact rural parts of the state with fewer providers. The package also included a $50 billion federal Rural Hospital Transformation Program, but it's unclear how much of the money will be allocated to New York. One day after the report was released, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a $300 million investment towards expanding access to health care statewide. The funding was awarded through the Statewide Health Care Facility Transformation Program, which will be allocated towards 50 projects that expand access to primary, inpatient, behavioral and long-term care. 'This targeted investment will help ensure that every New Yorker — regardless of ZIP code — can access safe, high-quality health care,' Hochul said in a statement. 'By supporting providers that serve vulnerable and underserved populations, we're strengthening the foundation of our health care system and building a healthier future for all.' IN OTHER NEWS: — The new CEO of Public Partnerships LLC, Miki Kapoor is speaking out for the first time since taking the helm of the company in recent weeks in an op-ed published in the Times Union. Kapoor bashed advocates and fiscal intermediaries that previously ran the state's consumer-directed personal assistance program for 'exploiting a vulnerable population for political or personal gain.' PPL, he claimed, 'did not create the problems that have plagued CDPAP for years.' 'We were brought in to fix them,' he wrote. According to Kapoor, PPL has paid $1.8 billion to 230,000 personal assistants who work for more than 200,000 consumers that completely the transition to the program's new administrative system. He noted that they've rooted out inflated administrative fees from previous fiscal intermediaries that ran the program, and did away with a system of 'fragmented oversight.' 'Let's not pretend challenges don't exist in transitions of this scale,' Kapoor wrote. 'But to suggest this rollout was not a good one, or that it has reduced care for New Yorkers, is simply untrue.' — Breaking Ground is stationing outreach workers inside the emergency room at New York-Presbyterian's Lower Manhattan Hospital five days a week to connect unsheltered homeless patients to services. It is an expansion of a program that launched in January 2024 at New York-Presbyterian's Columbia University Irving Medical Center. In the first year, Breaking Ground staff placed 50 people into transitional or permanent housing and made 184 referrals for needed items and connections to care, according to the organization. MAKING ROUNDS: — Melody Goodman was named dean of the NYU School of Global Public Health, effective immediately. She has served as the school's interim dean since March 2024 and a faculty member since 2017. GOT TIPS? Send story ideas and feedback to Maya Kaufman at mkaufman@ and Katelyn Cordero at kcordero@ Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You'll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day's biggest stories. What you may have missed — The state Department of Health adopted a series of changes last week to loosen the regulatory review requirements for major health care projects, POLITICO Pro's Maya Kaufman reported. Gov. Kathy Hochul had directed the department in 2024 to streamline the process by increasing the financial thresholds that trigger a detailed review, citing a need to 'alleviate strain on both providers and the State.' Odds and Ends NOW WE KNOW — Boar's Head plans to reopen troubled deli meat plant, but r eports of sanitation problems persist. TODAY'S TIP — What to do when you make contact with poison ivy. STUDY THIS — A Yale study finds that a mobile app designed to deliver suicide-specific therapy reduced suicidal behavior among high-risk patients. WHAT WE'RE READING — After years of anger directed at CDC shooting manifests worst fears. (New York Times) — Claiming to fight waste, the Trump administration slashes potentially cost-saving research. (STAT) — Patient seeking care at NIH hospital detained by ICE. (Washington Post) Around POLITICO — Everything we know about the fatal shooting near CDC headquarters, via Sophie Gardner. — Lauren Gardner: Industry frets Kennedy's mRNA decisions will curb cancer breakthroughs. — MAHA gets frustrated with Kennedy ahead of new policy report, Marcia Brown and Lauren Gardner report. MISSED A ROUNDUP? Get caught up on the New York Health Care Newsletter.
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
New York Warns of $34 Billion Budget Hole, Biggest Since 2009 Crisis
New York state 's cumulative three-year budget gap has swelled to $34 billion, rising 25% from Governor Kathy Hochul's estimate in January as federal funding slows, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said. The projected deficit as a share of total spending would be the biggest since the financial crisis in 2009, DiNapoli said in a report Friday. The shortfall is driven by spending growth in Medicaid and education, and as New York and other states grapple with billions of dollars in cuts to safety-net programs from President Donald Trump's budget and spending bill.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Should New York's $270B pension fund abandon Wall Street?
The Scoop A candidate running to be New York state's chief money manager says he would pull the state's huge pension fund — the third largest in America — away from Wall Street firms. Drew Warshaw is running for New York state comptroller, a job most voters would struggle to define but one that includes oversight of the state's pension fund. If he unseats 18-year incumbent Thomas DiNapoli, Warshaw's plan is to move much of its nearly $300 billion of investments into ultra-cheap, passive index funds. The New York State and Local Retirement System has more than $90 billion invested in private equity, private credit, real estate, and other complex assets. All promise high returns — catnip for pension managers facing future payouts to retirees — but charge high fees, too. The question facing New York and hundreds of other state and local pension funds, charitable endowments, universities, and government funds around the world: Are these high-priced managers worth the fees they're charging? Historically, yes. Since the 1970s, these 'alternative' investments — so named because they aren't publicly traded stocks or bonds — have provided an edge. But that's been less true recently, as big tech stocks like Microsoft and Nvidia have soared. And now that alternative managers are chasing mom-and-pop investors, there are real questions about whether they can keep beating the broader market. Warshaw doubts it's worth trying, though he says he'll dig into each fund. NYSLRS has fallen short of its assumed rate of return — the investing profits it believes it needs to meet its obligations to pensioners — in six of the past 15 years, according to data from the Boston College Center for Retirement Research. 'My starting position is 'deeply skeptical' and that these alternative asset classes have to prove their value,' Warshaw said in an interview. 'With all this capital flowing into private markets, at some point you're going to regress to the mean' and be left with subpar returns, after fees. That was Brad Lander's assumption when he became New York City's comptroller in 2021, overseeing the city's pension fund. 'I came in as a private-equity skeptic,' Lander said. He replaced the fund's chief investor, who had a long history in private markets, with one from index giant State Street, and ordered a review. Instead, he ended up seeking permission from the state legislature to increase the fund's exposure to private markets, which now accounts for 25% of its investments. 'My team convinced me that, even with higher fees, we would be better off,' he said. 'But it requires discipline. It's a healthy debate to have.' Know More Warshaw knows he's running for a job most voters don't understand, and has borrowed from Zohran Mamdani's playbook, posting videos on social media of him dropping fistfuls of cash and giant novelty checks off on Fridays by Wall Street's bronze bull statue. His opponent in next year's Democratic primary is DiNapoli, New York's longest-serving statewide elected official. Warshaw said an analysis produced by researchers at Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research found that, had NYSLRS met its handpicked benchmarks, the fund would be about $100 billion larger today. Semafor confirmed the performance data and benchmarks that Stanford used, which are available from NYSLRS's public reports, but not the underlying analysis of returns. The New York state pension has lagged its benchmark over one, three, five, and 10-year timeframes in private equity and private credit. It has beaten its benchmarks over all four time periods in public stocks and bonds, where it largely uses passive strategies. It has paid about $9 billion in fees to outside managers over that decade, public filings show. About two-thirds of New York pension fund's $113 billion in public stocks are currently in index funds, according to its latest annual report. The rest is managed by about 40 outside firms, whom Warshaw said he'd replace with passive strategies that mirror stock and bond portfolios at a fraction of the cost. He said he would 'take a closer look' at its $50 billion in private equity, managed by firms including Blackstone, KKR, and Vista Equity; its $12 billion in private credit; and $35 billion in real estate and infrastructure. 'It has been trying and failing to beat the market,' Warshaw said. 'I don't think taxpayers should be funding something that's impossible.' 'Anyone can cherry-pick comparisons,' a spokesman for DiNapoli said. 'We have full confidence in the strength of New York State's pension fund. The returns from our asset allocation continue to provide retirement security for our more than 1.2 million working and retired members and their beneficiaries.' Step Back Warshaw, 44, never worked on Wall Street, which helps explain his antipathy toward the idea that it has a secret sauce. He was chief of staff at the Port Authority as it rebuilt Ground Zero, then went to Columbia Business School — where the 'Day One lesson was 'don't try to beat the market' and the most popular class was some version of 'how to beat the market,'' he says, a disconnect that informs his current campaign. He quit a housing nonprofit in May to run against DiNapoli, who was appointed by the state legislature in 2007 and reelected four times without facing a Democratic primary challenger. Plenty of pensions and endowments have missed out on gains over the past five years because they spread their money around across the world and different investment types. That means they own less of the big tech stocks that have soared and been more exposed to bumps in real estate, international stocks, and interest rates. As a model to emulate, Warshaw points to Nevada, which by the early 2010s put most of its pension money into passive index funds. It invests a small amount in riskier bets through third parties that serve as no-fuss feeders to private equity and venture capital firms. 'New York is not Nevada,' DiNapoli's spokesman said. 'The KISS — 'keep it simple, stupid' — model has paid off very well over the past few years,' said Chris Aillman, who stepped down in June as chief investment officer of the California State Teachers Retirement System, the second-largest public pension in the US. 'If only it were so simple to pick those seven stocks in hindsight.' Unusually, New York state lets a single official decide how to invest its pension money. It appears that only Connecticut has the same setup, after North Carolina's governor signed a bill in June to shift investment oversight to a board. Liz's view Searching for alpha is a noble cause, and investors always want to think they can find profits others have missed. Private investors had an edge for a while, playing on the margins of unloved corporate entities and capitalizing on post-2008 regulations that hamstrung bank lending. But the more money they raise, the more they will whittle away at their advantage. President Donald Trump's executive order this week allowing private assets in 401(k) accounts could bring trillions more into the space, which will inevitably hurt returns. This happened long ago in leveraged buyouts — the wildcatters at KKR returned 40% or more from their early funds and now the industry calls half that a home run —and it will eventually happen in other areas of investing. Passive will come to alternatives, too, right around the time we stop calling them alternatives. Today there is no S&P 500 index for private equity, but BlackRock — whose index funds put plenty of active mutual-fund managers out of business by showing their flaws — is quietly working on a fix. Apollo and State Street just launched an index fund for private credit and more are coming. The View From Brad Lander ESG investing may not be as fashionable as it was a few years ago but public pensions, whose beneficiaries are union members in largely Democratic-leaning cities and states like New York, remain committed. Lander says he's far more effective pushing those ideas through New York City's pension plan's private investments than its public ones, where efforts to needle Amazon and Starbucks on unionization fell flat. Lander pressured Apollo — in whose private funds it's a major investor — into protecting union jobs at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, and bought the mortgages of 35,000 rent-stabilized housing units from the failed Signature Bank last year. 'If we hadn't done that, I think it's quite likely a bottom feeder could have bought those,' he said. 'The core responsibility is obviously delivering strong returns,' Lander said, 'but you just have a much more direct impact' by investing directly in private markets. Notable 'Still boring after all these years,' Pensions & Investments magazine wrote in 2020 of Idaho's retirement system, which loosely follows the Nevada model. Long after ESG investing has lost its shine, two professors in June advocated a more expansive view of public pensions as 'embodiments of public values, not vehicles to maximize beneficiary wealth.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Wall Street bonus update: Who's winning in banking and private equity
A new report predicts who's ahead in the race for year-end bonuses on Wall Street. Private credit is faring better than private equity, and traders are in for big payouts. The report was compiled by the compensation consultancy Johnson Associates. The M&A recovery may look strong on paper, but that doesn't guarantee generous bonuses for dealmakers. A new compensation report from Johnson Associates shows traders riding a wave of volatility to bigger year-end bonuses while many private equity professionals and M&A bankers brace for another year of stagnant or shrinking pay. Equities traders are on track to notch bonus gains of 20% to 30% this year, while fixed income desks could see increases of 10% to 20%, the compensation consultancy's report released Tuesday said. Debt underwriting is benefiting from a spike in refinancing demand, with payouts forecast to rise 5% to 15%. However, bonuses for M&A advisors are forecasted to be flat to up about 5%. That's a long way off from what dealmakers expected coming into 2025, but perhaps better than they might have believed in April as tariff fears mounted. Last year, Wall Street bonuses overall surged by 34% to $47.5 billion, the highest total on record, according to a report from Thomas DiNapoli, the New York comptroller. This year, M&A and IPOs have been muted as companies waited to assess the impact of President Donald Trump's tariffs and other policy changes. "It was dead in Q1" for mergers and acquisitions, said Chris Connors, a principal at Johnson Associates, adding, "but there was a recovery in the second quarter." Among alternatives, private credit is expected to be the breakout winner. Bonuses for private credit professionals are forecast to climb between 2.5% and 7.5% as investor demand surges and firms jostle to hire top talent. Johnson's report, however, warned that private credit's hiring spree is vulnerable to risks. "Private credit has certainly reached bubble territory in terms of fundraising, investor demand, the talent market," Connors said. "It hasn't quite yet popped, but I do think cracks are showing," he added. Bonus increases will be lower in traditional private equity. Large-cap funds are expected to hold pay steady, but mid- and small-cap firms could slash bonuses by up to 5%, according to the report, which blamed "fundraising difficulties" and questions around headcount levels. The Johnson Associates report also flagged broader risks that could further impact bonuses. "These are real concerns," Connors said of remaining geopolitical uncertainty and tariffs. He added that financial services firms, for the most part, "have been incredibly resilient in the face of all that." Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Mint
7 days ago
- Business
- Mint
Wall Street Bonus Pool to Grow as Bank Revenue Boosted by Rally
(Bloomberg) -- The outlook for Wall Street bonuses is improving, with payouts now set to rise across most sectors of the finance industry as the market rebounds. After a tepid start to the year, investment bankers, hedge-fund employees and asset-management professionals are now poised to see higher year-end incentive pay in 2025, according to the latest report Tuesday from compensation consultant Johnson Associates Inc. That marks a turnaround from expectations set earlier in the year, when payouts were projected to decline in the wake of muted business activity amid a US trade war and geopolitical tensions. 'The year will end up broadly positive, which is a big change from what we were thinking three or four months ago,' Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates, said in an interview. 'Financial services have fared pretty well, and benefited in some cases from the volatility, and the up markets.' The new forecast follows an upbeat second quarter on Wall Street, where traders saw record revenue as uncertainty around tariffs and tax policy drove a surge of activity across the stock market. That volatility has fueled demand for trading, potentially driving bonuses for equity traders up as much as 30% this year. Their fixed-income counterparts could also see an increase, though more modest at 10% to 20%, according to the report. Optimism is growing in other corners of the finance industry as well. Investment bankers have started to see a pickup in mergers and acquisitions and other deal-related activity, which had been muted amid economic and geopolitical uncertainties. But the projected surge in M&A activity, spurred by a presidential administration seen as business-friendly, has yet to fully materialize. As a result, advisory-sector bonuses are set to rise no more than a modest 5% this year, but with a 'strong pipeline' of deals to come, Johnson Associates said in its report. 'Deals take months to close, so that will push it into next year,' Alan Johnson said. Corporate clients have also pulled back on stock sales amid the equity-market volatility. Bankers who help companies raise equity are likely to see bonuses that are flat to down 5%, while their counterparts in debt underwriting could see their payouts rise 10% to 15% as 'debt issuance trends higher as firms seek refinancing,' according to the report. Demand for wealth-management services could also see advisers' payouts rise as much as 5%, according to Johnson Associates. Similarly, those working in asset management could see an uptick of 2.5% to 7.5% as the market recovers from early second-quarter declines and margin pressures continue. Last year, Wall Street bonuses jumped across the board, with the total pool for payouts rising to a record $47.5 billion as industry profits soared, according to estimates by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The average annual bonus rose by almost a third, to $244,700, the first significant increase since the Covid-19 pandemic. With almost half of 2025 left to go, full-year forecasts could change — especially if the market dips, tariff negotiations go south or questions around the Federal Reserve's path toward lower interest rates go unanswered. Some businesses will be more affected by uncertainty than others, including retail and commercial banking. Employees in those fields could see their bonuses unchanged to down 5%, with worsening consumer credit scores and slowing loan demand putting pressure on their business, Johnson Associates said. Professionals in private equity and venture capital also face their own challenges amid a difficult fundraising environment, markdowns of assets and money sitting on the sidelines. Finance firms are also focused on managing their expenses, with artificial intelligence helping drive efficiencies, prompting increased scrutiny of staffing and compensation structures, Alan Johnson said. As automation accelerates, firms are reevaluating how and where talent is deployed across their companies, he said. 'In the short term, it's going to reduce headcount: 'We're not going to need 10 analysts, we're going to need five,'' he said. 'It will lead to efficiencies. And the people who remain will be paid even more.' More stories like this are available on
