ABA Medicaid rates in New York fell sharply in 2026. Effective October 1, 2026, New York Medicaid pays $38.52 an hour for code 97153, one-on-one ABA delivered by a technician. That ranks 41st of 42 states and is 39.3% below the national median of $63.44. New York is now the lowest-paying state in the country among those that pay technician ABA on 97153.
The October rate followed a cut in April of the same year, and an earlier one in October 2025. All three changes, and the budget actions behind them, are covered below. All rates here are compiled from official New York Medicaid publications, and each one links to its source document on the New York Medicaid rates hub.
The New York technician rate changed twice in six months:
- April 1, 2026: the fee-for-service rate for 97153 was cut to $14.45 per 15 minutes, a 14.2% reduction, and the Applied Behavior Analysis fee schedule was updated.
- October 1, 2026: the rate was cut again, to $9.63 per 15 minutes, a 33.4% reduction, with another fee schedule update the same day.
Two related items took effect on October 1, 2026. The FY2027 Enacted Budget Medicaid action: Applied Behavioral Analysis Reforms was enacted with that effective date. And Medicaid Update August 2026, Volume 42, Number 9, published August 1, 2026, announced a Reimbursement Change for Unlicensed Individuals Providing Applied Behavior Analysis Services, also effective October 1, 2026.
For an agency, the title of that notice is the key detail: the reduction is aimed at technician-delivered services. The analyst rates still carry their April 2022 effective date.
The 2026 reductions were the second and third steps of a sequence that started a year earlier. On October 1, 2025, the 97153 rate was cut to $16.85 per 15 minutes, a 12.5% reduction, under the FY2026 Enacted Budget Medicaid action: Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) Reforms. The same date carried NY SPA 25-61, Applied Behavior Analysis Fee Adjustment, and Medicaid Update August 2025, Volume 41, Number 8, on Applied Behavior Analysis Service Updates for Supervision of Unlicensed Individuals and Technicians.
Read together, the two budget years show a consistent policy direction: changes to how technician and unlicensed staff time is supervised and paid, implemented through successive cuts to 97153. Agencies planning beyond the current fiscal year should treat further budget actions on ABA as a real possibility and watch each enacted budget and Medicaid Update closely.
At $9.63 per unit, 97153 pays $38.52 an hour. Louisiana, at $40.00, is the next-lowest state on that code, and West Virginia shows a lower technician figure of $10.00 an hour only because it pays under code H2014. At the top, Alaska pays $127.80 and Georgia $123.64.
The economics are severe. Federal data for May 2025 puts New York's median wage for the closest comparable technician occupation at $22.69 an hour, against $22.08 nationally. At the new rate:
- the wage is 83.7% of the 97153 rate, and
- the margin after a loaded wage is $6.27 an hour.
That margin has to absorb supervision, travel, cancellations and administration. At $6.27, a single cancelled session or an hour of unbilled drive time can erase the margin on several billed hours. Agencies serving New York Medicaid fee-for-service members should model technician cases at the October 2026 rate, not the rate they were paid earlier in the year.
A margin this thin changes which service models can operate on fee-for-service technician hours. Home-based programs that spend significant time driving between clients are hit hardest, because travel is unpaid and the rate no longer covers it. Clinic-based models, where sessions run back to back and cancellations can be backfilled, are better placed.
Staffing is the second pressure point. With wages taking most of the rate, there is little room to raise technician pay, which makes recruitment and retention harder. Agencies should expect turnover pressure and plan for it, for example by investing in supervision quality, career paths and predictable schedules rather than wage increases alone.
The third is payer mix. Because managed-care plans must pay at least the published rate but may pay more, the share of an agency's caseload under negotiated plan contracts now matters a great deal. Agencies should know, case by case, which children are fee-for-service and which are in a plan, and what each plan actually pays.
| Code | Service | NY per hour | Rank | vs national median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 97155 | Treatment with plan changes by an analyst | $77.04 | 35 of 41 | -23.8% |
| 97151 | Assessment by an analyst | $77.04 | 37 of 41 | -33.9% |
| 97156 | Parent and caregiver training | $77.04 | 36 of 43 | -18.7% |
| 97152 | Assessment support by a technician | $77.04 | 15 of 29 | 0.0% |
| 97154 | Group ABA led by a technician | $13.24 | 34 of 37 | -55.8% |
| 97158 | Group ABA led by an analyst | $13.24 | 26 of 30 | -64.5% |
New York pays one flat rate, $19.26 per 15 minutes, for 97151, 97152, 97155 and 97156. Those rates have been in effect since April 1, 2022. Because the national medians differ by code, the same $77.04 lands exactly at the median for technician assessment support but well below the median for analyst assessment and treatment.
Both group codes pay $3.31 per unit, or $13.24 an hour.
Before the cuts, the gap between New York's analyst and technician rates was modest. After October 2026, an analyst hour at $77.04 pays exactly twice a technician hour at $38.52. That shift matters for program design.
Analyst time, which was previously the expensive part of a case, now carries a better margin than technician time. Analyst-delivered caregiver training, assessment and treatment direction are relatively more sustainable than they were, while technician-heavy service plans have become harder to fund. Agencies should not distort clinical plans around billing, but they should recognize that the cost of delivering authorized technician hours has risen sharply relative to what the state pays for them.
The analyst proxy wage in New York is $28.58 an hour, close to the national $28.53. On the flat $77.04 analyst rate, that wage is 52.7% of the rate, leaving $36.42 an hour after a loaded wage. Technician assessment support (97152), at the same $77.04, leaves $44.79 an hour because the technician wage is lower.
Both wage figures use proxy occupations and are floors rather than market pay for licensed behavior analysts and credentialed technicians. In high-cost parts of the state, actual pay for licensed staff will run higher, and margins lower.
New York's rule for behavioral health is that plans must pay at least the published rate. For ABA, that makes the fee schedule the floor in managed-care contracts, and it means the 2026 cuts lower that floor as well. There are 122 plans on file in New York, so contract terms above the floor can vary widely. See New York Medicaid managed care.
The New York schedule attaches no prior authorization rule and no published unit limit to any ABA code from 97151 through 97158. Where authorization applies, it comes through the plan, so agencies working with several plans need a separate authorization reference for each.
Reviewing plan contracts after the cuts
Agencies should check how each plan contract defines its rate. A contract written as a percentage of, or equal to, the state fee schedule will have fallen with the cuts; a contract with fixed dollar rates may not have. Any contract that tracks the schedule is now worth renegotiating, with access to technician capacity as the central argument.
New York sits at or near the bottom on most ABA codes. Among its neighbors, New York's $9.63 technician unit is below New Jersey ($11.20), Pennsylvania ($12.73), Delaware ($15.68), Maryland ($20.91) and the District of Columbia ($27.50). On analyst treatment, Vermont leads the country at $197.40, and Virginia pays $93.92 for the technician hour.
For an operator working across state lines, the comparison matters in practice. A technician hour delivered a few miles across the border in New Jersey or Pennsylvania pays more than the same hour delivered in New York, and the gap to Maryland or the District of Columbia is far wider. Agencies with a regional footprint should weigh where new capacity goes, and should not assume that a staffing model that works elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic will cover its costs on New York fee-for-service technician hours.
Rebuild the budget at the October 2026 rates. Split the caseload into fee-for-service and plan members, and price each at what it actually pays. Model technician hours, analyst hours and groups separately, since the analyst rate is now twice the technician rate.
Then model delivered hours rather than authorized hours, with realistic travel and cancellation assumptions. The national ABA rates hub compares every state, and the New York hub covers all 299,478 current New York Medicaid rates.
Rates on this page are compiled from official New York Medicaid publications, including the Applied Behavior Analysis fee schedule editions and Medicaid Update notices. Each rate in the full dataset links to its source document and effective date. Per-hour figures convert 15-minute unit rates to an hourly equivalent, and ranks compare only states that publish the same service. See our methodology.