Source: Kaiser Family Foundation, State Decisions for Creating Health Insurance Marketplaces Almost all of the success in the Obamacare roll out to date has occurred in the dark blue states. Note, West Virginia is not dark blue. On the very same day that the federal government shutdown a few weeks ago, the Obamacare online Marketplace,…
Health
Health care is a funny thing. Everyone needs it, yet lots of people can't afford it, and hospitals have to treat them regardless. Treatment prices vary wildly depending not only on where you live but where you go and whether or not you have insurance. Oddly, those without insurance are almost always charged more for…
West Virginians rejoice! Rarely does our Mountain State top national rankings on good measures, but a report out this week shows that West Virginia, along with two other states, leads the country in the percent of uninsured state residents who will qualify for health insurance assistance due to Obamacare. Now, before you let your initial partisan reaction…
A report out this week finds that West Virginia leads the nation in prescription drug deaths. This may be unsurprising as many of us know someone who has fought addiction to pain-killers, but what is surprising is that overdose deaths in West Virginia have increased by more than 600 percent since 1999! This is an…
Who are the uninsured in West Virginia? Well, they are mostly the working poor, who, as it turns out, are exactly the people that the Affordable Care Act will help cover. Data released today from the United State Census Bureau provide detailed estimates on household characteristics at the state level including income, education, employment, race, and…
According to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of West Virginians covered by an employer-sponsored health insurance plan has dropped significantly since 2000. In that year, over 63 percent of all West Virginians had insurance provided through an employer compared to less than 56 percent in 2012, a drop of over…
It's with a heavy heart that I share the news of the passing this weekend of Dr. George Pickett, a titan of public health, not only in West Virginia but nationally and abroad. Dr. Pickett was a physician who spent his career working in public health in every imaginable way possible. He worked at the local…
Obamacare isn't perfect and I don't hesitate to admit it. Recently, however, there has been a number of opponents referring to it as a "train wreck." They say it will put a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor, that it is driving health care costs up, and that people won't support it. Fortunately, we…
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…
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…