There are far-right politicians – particularly in places like Texas – who love to opine about the sacrosanctity of the free market as they deride consumer-friendly policy choices of places like New York, where I serve in the state Senate. 

These red-state politicians have used the power of law to punish investors who don’t favor the oil and gas industry. They’ve spent tens of millions to bus migrants from the southern border into our cities. They’ve tried to use courts to make our doctors complicit in their assault on women’s healthcare.

Yet despite this posturing and gamesmanship, it turns out they’re perfectly happy to let New Yorkers subsidize many of their states’ poor policy choices. One of those ways is life insurance. A hidden subsidy —  invisible but very real — flows from blue state policyholders to red states every month. 

Here’s how it works: Life insurance companies depend on national mortality tables to bury differences, instead of pricing premiums based on data from the state where the insured actually resides. That means every time an insurer prices a policy, millions of New Yorkers are averaged in with the shorter-lived residents of states like Texas.

I’m introducing legislation to put a stop to that.

Let’s look at the facts: In New York, we invest deeply in public health, workplace safety and consumer protections. Our reward? A life expectancy of 79.5 years, among the best in the nation.

In Texas, life expectancy is 77.1. In Mississippi, a dismal 72.6. On average, we New Yorkers get to enjoy our families, friends and livelihoods for years longer than those states.

This isn’t the South’s bad luck. It’s bad governance. By refusing to expand Medicaid and provide structural support systems, Texas politicians have created a state where 16.8% of adults have no health insurance compared to 4.9% of New York’s population — more than three times New York’s rate.

Texans are also about three times more likely to die as a result of a firearm, and nearly three times more likely to die in a car crash. In 2025, the state’s permissive vaccine exemption policies helped fuel the largest U.S. measles outbreak in a quarter century — 762 reported cases and two dead children by a disease the country had declared eradicated in 2000.

While Texas Republicans brag on cable news about their "economic miracles" and low taxes, they conveniently leave out the fact that when they cut corners, their citizens pay the price with their health and their lives. And when the life insurance bill comes due, people in states with more responsible leaders – like New York – pay too. 

The insurance executives know what they are doing. They employ armies of actuaries who calculate risk down to the decimal point. 
They know a policyholder in New York is statistically likely to outlive one in Texas. They hide behind national averages because that allows them to offload red-state losses onto blue-state customers.

If Texas Republicans want to govern like the Wild West, gut your state’s healthcare system and let eliminated diseases come roaring back, that’s their prerogative. But don’t expect us New Yorkers to pay for Texas’ bad decisions through our life insurance bills. 

With our taxes, we New Yorkers pay to support responsible public health policy, and millions of us buy life insurance to protect our kids. It’s unfair that every month, a chunk of our premiums are siphoned off and shipped elsewhere to subsidize someone whose state government cares far less about their welfare.

That’s why I am introducing the Terminate Excessive Cross-state Actuarial Subsidization (TEXAS) Act in the New York State Senate.

The TEXAS Act is a heavy dose of free-market tough love. This legislation would force life insurance companies operating in New York to take state-specific mortality data into account when setting rates. No more cross-state subsidy buried in every premium. No more watered-down national averages. No more blue-state bailouts of red states.

Insurance companies will say they already use individual factors, like medical history and occupation, to personalize risk. They do — and this bill allows that to continue. But the research shows that New York’s public policy choices have an effect on life expectancy. Texas’ public policy does the same.

I’m not here to tell Texas politicians how to run their state. But if they want the freedom to ignore public health and safety in pursuit of their free market nirvana, they can stop expecting us New Yorkers to pick up the tab.

James Skoufis is a New York state senator.