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Fail: Congress Working on Toxics Policy
With the exception of education policy, there’s probably no other issue where states’ rights are paramount than when it comes to the health of its residents. Congress is currently considering a bill that would have devastating consequences to public health in Washington state if they don’t make major changes to the proposal. The federal Chemicals…
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New Low-Income Healthcare Clinic in Bellevue!
I went to the opening of the new ICHS clinic in Crossroads yesterday. It’s exciting to have this kind of facility here – one that is focused on serving our low-income population that have signed up in droves for healthcare under the Affordable Care Act. All these newly insured people have to have somewhere to…
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Resisting the Urge to Judge the Affordable Care Act
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Blog/2013/Dec/Resisting-the-Rush-to-Judge-the-Affordable-Care-Act.aspx A super-interesting (and brief) overview of how all the moving parts of the ACA have affected us, including the bad (website rollout) with the good (additional coverage, bending cost curve, rebates for excessive adminstrative spending, etc.)
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“This Washington” saves money on Medicaid costs
In an interesting article on the “Center for Public Integrity” website Washington State is called out as having a cost-effective way to make decisions about what medical treatments don’t actually work, and to stop paying for them. This is not without controversy, as you might expect. In order to cut costs and put Medicare on…
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Education wins in final budget
A week has passed since the end of the second (and final) special session this year and I’ve finally put socks and shoes on and shaved. This was an exhausting exercise as the Senate Republicans figured out how they were going to make decisions. I’m pleased we were able to get it done at the…
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Town Hall Wrap
Another town hall meeting. I should go back on the calendar and count how many we’ve done. These have been fun over the years and we keep fiddling with the formula. This time we had a full room so we took questions on index card. I read the cards exactly, and I think I…
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Legislative “Progress” – Early March
Each Legislative session has a rythym all its own. This one is waiting expectantly for something to happen. I think you’ll see a flurry of activity towards the end of the month as budgets start to get released. At the beginning of the session I said we had three priorities this year: balancing the budget…
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A Good Deal for Washington
One of the three key items that need to be resolved this year is the Medicaid expansion that is part of the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) or “Obamacare. (The other two are the overall budget and education funding increase as a result of the McCleary decision.) The policy choices are getting clearer and clearer…
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Standardized Tax Rates for all Marijuana
Rep. Reuven Carlyle and I introduced legislation today to standardize state tax rates across medical and non-medical marijuana. The medical market would now look like the setup initiative 502 put in place for recreational use. The press release we issued is below. My concern is that if we have an identical product being sold with…
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Legislative Update
We’ve gone through the first week. The governor and the state-wide officials have all been inaugurated, I fit into the same tuxedo I got married in 23 years ago for the inaugural ball, the Senate is in uproar about Senator Tom’s defection and the consequent change in partisan control, the sun came out (briefly) in…