Sarah Barth

On July 30, 2026, during the State of the State of New York Medicaid presentation at the United Hospital Fund’s 2026 Medicaid Conference, Medicaid Director Amir Bassiri announced an immediate, six-month moratorium on new Medicaid provider enrollments, including processing affected changes of ownership (CHOW) applications, for certain provider categories.

On May 28, 2026, New York State (NYS) Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation enacting the State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2026–2027 budget into law. The final enacted budget did not include amendments to New York’s health care transaction law (the Material Transaction Law),1 which Governor Hochul had previously proposed and which would have significantly expanded the NYS Department of Health’s (DOH) oversight of health care transactions in the state.

On December 19, 2025, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) proposed two mandatory Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (“CMMI”) drug payment models to test whether alternative methods for calculating Medicare rebates, based on international pricing metrics rather than inflation-based metrics, reduce costs for Medicare fee-for-service (“FFS”) beneficiaries and the Medicare program while preserving quality of care.