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…
Health
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…
The news headlines have been dominated recently about people who have had their health insurance plans cancelled and opponents of the Affordable Care Act are using it to attack the law. Let's ignore the rhetoric for a moment though and take a look at the facts and what it means for us as West Virginians. Spoiler…
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin announced this week that he is working on a bill delaying the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act for one year. On the surface, that sounds like it might be a perfectly fine idea, but here's the rub: it won't work. All in all, even though it may seem…
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 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…