With today's data release showing health coverage progress in West Virginia stalled even prior to the COVID-19 crisis, our new policy brief details how our state can utilize a Children's Health Insurance Program buy-in to cover all kids wvpolicy.org/a-chip-buy-in-…
Much progress has been made to achieve the goal of universal child health care coverage. But challenges and a need for affordable, comprehensive insurance options remain. A well-designed CHIP buy-in program could be a cost-effective way of moving toward universal coverage.
To learn more about West Virginia's current uninsured numbers and how a CHIP buy-in program could help move our state toward universal child health care coverage, tune in to our Facebook Live tomorrow at 6pm. It will be streamed from the WVCBP Facebook page.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
In WV, people convicted of felony offenses are not eligible to vote until after they have completed their sentence or parole supervision. In our new blog post, Taylor, Kenny, and Amber share how this policy has negatively impacted their lives: wvpolicy.org/no-laws-about-…
One out of every 100 West Virginians is disenfranchised due to a felony conviction. This second-class citizenship disproportionately impacts Black West Virginians, who are more than three times as likely as the general population to be ineligible to vote.
More than half of those barred from voting are living in our communities under probation or parole supervision. They may be subject to dozens of conditions that govern their daily lives.
As the @wvlegislature considers expanding drug use screening across TANF, @RhonniRogo's new blog post explains how such a policy choice would further stigma, harm vulnerable populations, and contradict public health best practices. wvpolicy.org/tanf-drug-use-…
The three-year pilot program in WV that screened drug use among TANF recipients has proven both inefficient and costly.
In FY 2020, the pilot program included 2,221 people. Just seven of them tested positive for any substance.
WV's results mirror those found in other states that implement drug screening for TANF applications. A Think Progress investigation of states with these laws found that of more than 263,000 applicants, less than 1% were rejected from TANF for positive drug tests.
Our keynote panelists were policymakers Don Hineman & Duane Goossen of Kansas, who were able to provide us a cautionary tale by diving into the repercussions of the Kansas Tax Experiment, the so-called "March to Zero" which sought to eventually eliminate the state's income tax.
From Rep. Hineman: "So how did it [the tax experiment] go? Revenues dropped precipitously, down $700 million in the first year of the experiment, and the budget surplus was soon consumed by the structural imbalance between revenues and expenditures."
"Desperation was the order of the day. Budget cuts were performed with a meat cleaver rather than a surgical scalpel… Efforts to balance revenue and expenditures created diminished agency budgets, which severely impacted delivery of essential governmental services."