The House proposal to repeal the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with the American Health Care Act (AHCA), provides only a tiny fraction of very wealthy West Virginians tax cuts while reducing the number of Americans with health coverage by an estimated 24 million. The two big tax cuts included in the…
Health
Previous data shows that a repeal of the Affordable Care Act will more than double the number of uninsured people in West Virginia. Read. A new report by the Economic Policy Institute looks at a repeal's impact on employment. It estimates how the combination of tax cuts and spending cuts will affect employment across the…
This West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy report, Repealing the Affordable Care Act: Hurting Our Health and Our Economy, provides a detailed analysis of the human and economic impact of repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in West Virginia. Read the full report. Repealing the ACA would have far-reaching effects throughout the Mountain State, including…
With a new president and Congress, the health care gains made throughout the last six years face their greatest threat yet. Congress has voted more than 60 times to roll back the historic progress that has been made to expand health coverage to millions of people in this country and to improve coverage for those…
With the new Trump Administration's promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare), Congress is now considering partial repeal through the budget reconciliation process, to avoid a filibuster. The repeal maybe phased in over time, but no replacement plan has been defined. The budget reconciliation process only allows changes to components…
The Census Bureau released the 2014 American Community Survey (ACS) this week, which contains data on poverty, income, and health insurance coverage for all 50 states. For West Virginia, the data release had both some really good and some not-so-good news. First the good news. The 2014 ACS release was to first to have data…
The Supreme Court upheld a key provision of the Affordable Care Act today, protecting subsidies that make health insurance affordable for millions of Americans, and tens of thousands of West Virginians.In a 6-3 ruling, the Court found that premium subsidies should be available both in states that have set up their own health insurance exchanges, and…
Just a month into peak flu season, the CDC has already declared a national epidemic due to the flu's widespread activity and the deadly nature of this year's virus. West Virginia is no exception. The outbreak is considered widespread across our state, as you can see from the the map below. While preventing the spread of the…
Want a real scare this Halloween? Imagine having to pay up to ten times more on average for your children's health care. This is the increased cost estimate if Congress does not reauthorize funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), according to a study commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The CHIP program provides…
The health of of close to 25,000 children in West Virginia is at risk if Congress does not chose to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). As Senator Jay Rockefeller mentioned in today's Charleston Gazette, defunding CHIP could hurt not only children's health but making it harder for families to make ends meet. CHIP is a…