By supporting the sweeping reconciliation package passed this week, West Virginia’s Congress members have the shameful distinction of having voted for the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food assistance in program history, despite representing a population and economy that benefits greatly from both programs. This is the most harmful legislation for the safety net and low-income households in a generation. It increases economic hardship and poverty for millions of households, shifts hundreds of millions of dollars in food and health costs onto our state’s budget, and simultaneously increases the national debt by trillions of dollars.
West Virginians across the state will be harmed as a result of this package, rushed through Congress under the guise of an arbitrary deadline.
Rep. Moore, Rep. Miller, Senator Capito, and Senator Justice’s votes take food off the tables of children and veterans and deny Medicaid assistance to parents of older children, rural residents, and coal miners who lose their jobs through no fault of their own—West Virginians we all would agree are deserving of a little support during a difficult time. Tens of thousands of West Virginians will lose their health and food assistance because of this legislation, but the impacts do not end there.
For the first time in history, SNAP food assistance for entire states will be at risk, with a provision that shifts costs rather than generating actual savings, requiring that state budgets absorb a share of SNAP benefits that is expected to cost West Virginia more than $500 million through 2034 or force the state to withdraw from the program altogether. As a result of the loss of federal investment, thousands of jobs in energy, construction and building trades, health care, and the food sector will be lost in West Virginia alone. Rural hospitals are expected to reduce services or close their doors altogether as they see fewer reimbursements and increased uncompensated care. Charitable food and health providers will see a spike in need that they’ve already warned they cannot absorb.
On average, forty percent of U.S. households will be worse off financially as a result of this package. Their meager tax cuts will be far outweighed by the higher health care and food costs they are saddled with. Everyday West Virginia families are not who this package was designed to benefit; rather we are the ones being forced to shoulder the costs of extending tax cuts skewed to the wealthiest households in America: the cuts to food assistance and health care generate enough to pay for tax cuts for people making incomes over $500,000 per year.
If West Virginia’s members of Congress think that by foisting painful decisions onto state lawmakers and delaying the implementation of harmful provisions they can escape accountability for the consequences of this bill, they can be assured that is not the case. The WVCBP and our partners will follow the implementation of this bill, assess the impacts of the policies borne out of this legislation, and do our job to educate West Virginians on the effects.
Read this fact sheet for further details on how the reconciliation package will negatively impact health care access in West Virginia.
West Virginia’s Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA) provides health coverage to state and local government employees as well as public school educators and staff, with total employee enrollment of about 75,000 active members and over 200,000 enrollees once counting dependent family members and retirees.
With the start of the new PEIA plan year this week, those enrollees are being hit with significant health insurance cost hikes including monthly premium increases, higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, and, for some, a much larger surcharge for their spouse’s health insurance coverage. And for the first time in a few years, their increases in health coverage costs will not be offset by pay raises. In fact, in most cases, this year’s health insurance cost increases for public employees will cost significantly more than households have “saved” from multiple state income tax reductions in recent years. State leaders have long wrestled with the cost of funding the state’s employee health program and a special session is expected to happen later this year to discuss the matter.
Here are three key considerations for the public and lawmakers to bear in mind amid PEIA program discussions.
Health Cost Increases Have Erased Any Benefit of State Tax Cuts for the Average PEIA Enrollee
During the 2023 state legislative session when lawmakers were simultaneously considering significant new employee costs for PEIA enrollees alongside deep personal income tax cuts, then-Governor Justice framed his tax cut proposal as a way to reduce the pain of increased health coverage costs, stating at the time, “It’s not too bad a tradeoff in my book.”
Just two years later, the reality is that tax cuts were not a tradeoff for the average PEIA employee. For most enrollees, this year’s PEIA cost increases more than erase the income tax cut they received from the two rounds of tax cuts implemented on January 1, 2025.
In fact, once accounting for two years of significant premium increases, most PEIA enrollees are absorbing greater health care cost increases than the annual tax benefit received from all rounds of the state’s deep income tax cuts. Half of the new plan year health cost increases highlighted in the examples above are greater than the average household benefit from all three rounds of tax cuts (less than $400/annually) and once also accounting for health insurance premium increases in 2024, that tax benefit is more than wiped out for the majority of PEIA enrollees.
Years of Punting on PEIA Helped to Perpetuate the “Flat Budget” Myth That Drove Deep Income Tax Cuts
After the 2018 teacher and school employee strikes, driven in large part by flat wages and rising health insurance costs for state workers, Governor Jim Justice and state lawmakers sought to find a long-term plan for PEIA. After failing to find legislative consensus on the PEIA Task Force’s recommendations, Governor Justice made a promise to state workers: no PEIA premium increases during his time as governor. This promise is commonly understood as shielding workers from the true cost of their share of health insurance, up until 2023’s PEIA reform legislation was passed which proponents said was necessary to rightsize PEIA’s cost balance.
But that promise also shielded the state—the employer—from seeing its true share of PEIA costs, as well. With premiums frozen, one-time money was used to cover normal and ongoing PEIA cost growth between 2019 and 2023. During those same years, Governor Justice’s administration stopped producing long-term budgeting forecasts while repeatedly pressuring lawmakers to enact deep income tax cuts with the promise that the state budget could stay flat (or decoupled from the true inflation-adjusted costs of state programs) well into the future.
Without a true sense of ongoing and future PEIA costs, lawmakers cut too deeply into the state’s largest source of general revenue, the state income tax, risking their ability to pay for base budget costs even as the tax cuts themselves generated little benefit for the average West Virginia household—because as quickly became apparent, the budget cannot stay flat indefinitely.
Lawmakers now find themselves facing the pressures of a perfect storm: declining state revenues hitting just as the delayed implementation of costly legislation begins impacting the state budget. But there are reasonable and fiscally responsible measures that can be taken to continue fulfilling the promise of PEIA to public employees, as outlined in a recent report highlighting ways state lawmakers could raise hundreds of millions of dollars annually without raising taxes on any households making less than $100,000. In fact, just forgoing the 2024 income tax cuts (the four percent triggered cut and the additional two percent cut passed in September) would have given state lawmakers nearly enough revenue to fund the state’s share of PEIA growth for three years.
The tax cut the average West Virginia family gets will never be enough to offset the deep cuts and costs they are forced to absorb as a result, as exemplified via the meager tax cuts households received compared with their increased health care costs.
Weakening Benefits Would Undermine State Efforts to Increase Regional Competitiveness
All states are grappling with effective ways to manage rising costs in their state employee health plans. Nearly all states report having undertaken multiple cost containment measures in recent years including benefit design initiatives, provider payment structure changes, and utilization management initiatives. PEIA officials in West Virginia report having undertaken more than ten cost containment efforts since 2019 including wellness initiatives, risk-based contracting, primary care-based initiatives, and disease management programs.
However, there are some cost containment strategies that would go too far—harming state workers and undermining our economic and job market strategies—while also likely failing to rein in costs.
Reducing the share of health costs covered by the state would make West Virginia less competitive with its neighbors and would fly in the face of the recommendations of the 2018 PEIA Task Force, which recommended the state increase its share of health insurance costs. Among West Virginia’s neighbors, all states offer some coverage that is more generous than PEIA in both actuarial value and employer contributions.
As we’ve highlighted previously, privatization efforts are another often referenced strategy that, once looking under the hood, is misguided to address either cost or benefits quality. Only three states have privatized state employee health insurance plans, with all others offering self-insured, state administered plans. One reason few states have privatized is because commercial employer insurance has far higher administrative costs than publicly run plans do. According to the most recent PEIA finance plan, administration is expected to cost just three percent of total plan costs, far below the cost with private insurers, where administrative costs cost five times that (ranging from 15 to 20 percent).
Despite significant increases in deductibles and out-of-pocket costs for the new plan year, PEIA has much lower out-of-pocket costs for employees than the average employer-sponsored health plan in West Virginia. The average deductible for employee only coverage in PEIA in the 2026 plan year is $715, compared with nearly $2,000 on the commercial employer-sponsored coverage market in West Virginia. Similarly, the average deductible for employee plus dependent coverage in PEIA this year is $1,450, compared with nearly $4,500 on the employer-sponsored coverage market.
The current structure of PEIA is a good deal for both the state and enrollees, with better out-of-pocket costs and slower plan growth than that seen on the commercial market. While some cost-containment strategies are warranted, lawmakers should stay away from efforts to privatize or weaken benefits, as both will have broader impacts on the state’s economy and workforce. In any proposal, lawmakers must acknowledge that raising sufficient revenue must be part of the discussion and that the state budget pressures resulting from recent tax cuts have increased costs rather than savings for many West Virginia households.
Read Kelly’s full blog post.
Many West Virginians had their lives upended by flooding this year. Our colleagues at Legal Aid of WV are offering assistance replacing important documents and benefits cards and applying for disaster benefits.
If you have been impacted by recent flooding, you can apply for assistance online here or by calling (866)-255-4370.
You can learn more about natural disaster relief resources here.
The KIDS COUNT® Data Book is a 50-state report of recent data developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation analyzing how kids are faring in post-pandemic America. Each year, the Data Book presents national and state data from 16 indicators in four domains — economic well-being, education, health, and family and community factors — and ranks the states according to how children are faring overall. The 2025 KIDS COUNT® Data Book was published last month and a recent article, featuring insight from WVCBP senior policy analyst Sean O’Leary, highlights some of the report’s findings. Excerpt below:
The 2025 Kids Count Data Book was recently published, showcasing where each state ranks in several areas like education, health and economic well-being for children.
West Virginia ranked 41st in overall well-being, an improvement from the last data book, where the state was 44th.
Sean O’Leary, Kids Count researcher with the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, explained what the study looks at.
“This measures child well-being across the state,” he said. “We’ll be making one for each county, but this one is just statewide.”
The state has made slight progress in several areas, O’Leary said.
“We’ve made some incremental progress,” he said. “I think a lot of that is tied to a fall in child poverty, which had spiked the year before. There is still room for improvement, though. Our child poverty rate has never dipped below 20% in the past several years.”
One area of note was education, which still hasn’t reached its pre-COVID heights.
While the education and early childcare systems as a whole have good resources, there are still several children who don’t attend preschool programs, said Kristy Ritz, executive director of the West Virginia Association for Young Children.
“I know that with young children ages 3 and 4, 71% are not in school,” she said.
Another area of concern in education is declining test scores, O’Leary said.
“I’m concerned about the test scores,” he said. “What the Legislature has done is focus on funneling resources into private schools and homeschooling, but four out of five kids go to public school. There hasn’t been a discussion around them and how we can improve public schools.”
Health care was one of the most improved areas in the data book, with increased access to Medicaid leading to positive results, O’Leary said.
“I’m always happy to see how low the number of children without health insurance is in the state,” he said. “We rank third in the country, and one of the reasons for that is that we expanded Medicaid. If parents have health insurance, it’s more likely their children will have health insurance.”
However, health among children and teens ages 10 to 17 is still on the decline, with over 40% either overweight or obese. This issue can be addressed by increasing access to healthy food services, O’Leary said.
“We are getting worse in that indicator,” he said. “That’s one of the health outcomes we can probably address with things like the SNAP Benefits program.”
Recent actions cutting federal programs haven’t impacted the data book yet, but the state could see the results of losing certain programs next year.
While early childcare grants are currently safe, things could change, Ritz said.
“We’ve been assured that there will not be cuts to the Child Care Development Block Grant,” she said. “At the same time, things change day-to-day. If there are cuts, West Virginia will absolutely be affected because the majority of our funding for childcare comes from that.”
If certain grants for programs are removed, it could have a negative impact on kids, O’Leary said.
“Since this is looking at last year’s numbers, we haven’t seen that impact yet,” he said. “If there are cuts to Medicaid that come down, that can impact the number of children on health insurance. Cuts to SNAP will impact the number of children who can access nutritious foods. If there are cuts to education, that will impact our test scores. There’s a lot floating out there that can have major impacts for West Virginia.”
Further resources for childcare providers can also lead to better results for youth in West Virginia in all aspects covered by the data book, Ritz said.
“The state needs to increase funding for it as a whole,” she said. “One of the things we work on is scholarships for people working in childcare programs… We’d like to see childcare employees automatically be eligible for scholarships since we know that would help with recruitment.”
Read the full article.
Access the 2025 KIDS COUNT Data Book.
New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the Mountain State has continued to experience job loss challenges over the last year. A recent article, featuring insight from the WVCBP, provides some key findings from the new data. Excerpt below:
Between May 2024 and May 2025, West Virginia experienced the biggest decrease in non-farm employment in the United States, according to new data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In May 2024, roughly 726,400 full-time jobs were held within West Virginia, according to the employment figures released Tuesday. Just one year later, that figure fell to 717,000 — a decrease of approximately 1.3%.
That means the Mountain State lost approximately 9,400 jobs last year. According to the bureau, that marked the biggest drop in employment opportunities for a single state within the one-year period. Iowa experienced the second-largest decline with a decrease of 0.5%.
West Virginia, Iowa and Maine were the only states to experience a decline in jobs, alongside the District of Columbia.
The remaining 47 states experienced an increase in employment opportunities. South Carolina experienced the biggest growth at 2.7%, or an increase of roughly 62,500 jobs.
The new data marks a continuation in job loss for the state, following data released by the bureau in January 2025 that indicated the state’s workforce shrank by 0.5% in 2024.
Between April 2024 and April 2025, the average job growth per state was 1.2% nationally, according to the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy. During that same period, West Virginia experienced a 0.1% decline in total nonfarm employment.
In May 2025, West Virginia had an unemployment rate of 3.8%, according to the bureau. The national unemployment rate in May 2025 was 4.2%.
Read the full article.
