The 81st West Virginia Legislature wrapped up session last Saturday night with 30 health-related bills (by my count). These bills spanned the spectrum from the hot button issue of abortion that continues to generate media coverage to bills that passed multiple committees and both chambers unanimously with nary a peep of press. Here I will…
Health
There was an odd argument that came up earlier this week in the Senate Finance committee debating HB4283 to raise the minimum wage in West Virginia – raising workers' wages would kick West Virginians off of Medicaid. This is odd for a number of reasons: first it suggests support for more dependence on public assistance…
Once again it looks like another year will go by without an increase in the state tobacco tax. This year it is quite surprising though as West Virginia is facing a severe budget crisis and raising tobacco taxes would essentially fix it all in one fell swoop. Nevertheless, our legislators seem intent on using our…
With just over a month left in the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act, the share of West Virginians without health insurance has already dropped significantly. As of this week, nearly 100,000 West Virginians have enrolled in health coverage through the ACA. The overwhelming majority of these sign-ups have come through Medicaid expansion,…
Surprise! West Virginia has a budget problem -- about a $200 million problem, in fact (you can read all about it here, here, and here!). Oddly enough, Medicaid, which for years has taken the brunt of the blame for anything budget related, has hardly been mentioned in the fervor. This is especially odd because the…
Bills introduced in both the Senate and the House this session propose to raise the tobacco tax in West Virginia by $1 per pack of cigarettes. While it is a big increase from the 55 cents per pack today, it would actually only catch West Virginia up to the national average ($1.53 per pack) while…
The Affordable Care Act is expected to have a dramatic impact on access to health insurance in West Virginia. This will be especially true for racial and ethnic minorities. Even though the minority population in West Virginia is relatively small compared to other states, it is 50 percent more likely to lack health insurance than…
The lead editorial that ran in the Charleston Daily Mail on Monday was...well, a bunch of malarkey. Or maybe it was hogwash. Either way, it was an inaccurate and misleading piece of partisan hackery (yes, I made that word up*) that was better suited for late-night talk radio and had no business being run in…
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollment figures released yesterday have apparently taken some people by surprise (which is a bit mystifying to me considering the absolute media saturation about the poorly functioning healthcare.gov website for weeks). Enrollment numbers were low across most of the country, they were very low in West Virginia as well---only 174…
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the enrollment figures for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for the first time today. Across the country, nearly 850,000 applications have been completed through the health insurance Marketplace, around 106,000 of which have enrolled in a health plan. In West Virginia, 174 individuals have selected…