Under Obamacare, West Virginia, along with Michigan and Kentucky, will see 81 percent of its currently uninsured residents receive some sort of assistance in getting health insurance, either by qualifying for Medicaid or tax-subsidies in the Marketplace. Of the estimated 270,000 West Virginians without health insurance, about 219,000 of them will qualify for assistance. Read more in Brandon’s blog post.
Wanted: ideas on how to prepare West Virginia for the decline of coal production in the southern part of the state. Ted’s blog post explains how one West Virginia leader is calling for a plan.
A top ranking that we’d like to change is West Virginia leading the nation in prescription drug overdose deaths. Investing in our communities is one way to fight the problem which has grown 600 percent since 1999. More in Brandon’s blog post.
Workers with higher education rates enjoy lower unemployment and higher wages than those without. One way to help those workers who don’t have the advantage of education is to provide career pathways, a concept Sean explains here. An estimated 260,000 workers in West Virginia would benefit from this program.
On October 28, Ted Boettner will be a speaker at the Synergy 2013 conference in Bridgeport, WV. The conference is sponsored by EnergizeWV and ANGA (America’s Natural Gas Alliance). The event will give the WVCBP an opportunity to educate industry representatives on the proposed Future Fund and how natural gas production can work to help the communities where it is taking place. His presentation will also include tax and budget issues involving the natural gas industry. 
WVCBP Executive Director Ted Boettner explains the Future Fund at the Bright Future Conference last month
