BREAKING NEWS: Health care costs are slowing down! Now to be clear, health care costs are not going down, they're just growing less quickly than before. Putting it like that doesn't make it sound all that promising but the truth is that it is actually a pretty big deal and caught most everyone flat-footed. It's…
Health
Want to be healthier and live longer? Then you might want to move to Aspen, Colorado, home of the healthiest county in the U.S. You'll also want to avoid our own McDowell County, one of the least healthy counties in the country. Every year, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Population Health Institute at…
The passage of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) included a little-heralded provision to permit states to expand coverage of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to children of public employees. So far, at least seven states have benefited from allowing public employees to enroll their children in CHIP. If West Virginia were to adopt…
Hospitals serve a vital role in any community, providing life-saving care to the injured and ill while contributing significant dollars and hours to community service. For example, an article in yesterday's Charleston Daily Mail proclaims that the Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC) "reports $115 million in area benefit" in 2012. These benefits included training classes…
There was an interesting article this week in the Washington Post called "Inside the Obamacare Resistance." What's interesting about it (to me at least) is that it helped tie the loose ends of thought about a number of articles and interviews that I've come across lately from opponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It's…
Obamacare parties like it's 1989…the Republican Party, that is. You see, the premise of Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act (ACA), is that everyone should have access to health care, and to accomplish this it requires 1) that insurers offer coverage to anyone regardless of health status and 2) everyone be required to have health…
This afternoon, the Governor's Office sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) chief, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, regarding the Affordable Care Act in West Virginia. In the letter dated July 15, Governor Tomblin requests "prompt answers to several questions concerning implementation of the ." (See the letter here) The majority of…
How could West Virginia save hundreds of millions of dollars per year in healthcare costs? By getting more kids to graduate high school. Confused? Let me explain. Most people understand that health is much more than just medical care. A person's health is the result of a combination of a myriad of factors like genetics,…
There's an interesting spin on Obamacare that has been going on in recent days as a result of several announcements out of Washington. First, the Treasury Department announced last week that it will delay enforcing the large-employer mandate for one year. Later, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it will simplify the…
Yesterday evening, the Obama administration made a surprise announcement that it would be delaying the employer mandate, a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, for one year. The rule, originally slated to take effect January 1st of 2014, requires employers with 50 or more employees to provide health insurance coverage to their workers or…