A job-seeker browses job listings at an employment office. In Idaho, at least 50,800 people are unemployed.
The state agency that handles unemployment insurance benefits, workforce training and helps jobless Idahoans search for work, anticipates a $3.5 million budget cut beginning at the stroke of midnight.
It’s the sequester, the $85 billion in automatic, across-the-board federal spending cuts that have the potential to affect nearly every aspect of government services. The Idaho Department of Labor is no exception — the agency charged with helping people find employment will now find itself cutting jobs.
Chief deputy director John McAllister has been through these kinds of cuts and swings in funding before. He’s been at the Idaho Department of Labor for 40 years and watched funding fluctuate dramatically in the 1980s, 90s, 2004, and the most recent recession. Continue Reading →
More Idaho workers earned minimum wage in 2012 than in any year since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track a decade ago.
The Idaho Department of Labor reports 7.7 percent of Idaho hourly workers earned $7.25 an hour or less last year. That’s up from 5 percent in 2011. The new data show Idaho has the largest share of minimum-wage workers in the country.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics estimated that 31,000 of Idaho’s 404,000 hourly workers were paid the minimum wage last year, an increase of 12,000 from 2011, when 5 percent of the state’s hourly workforce made the minimum wage or less. That ranked the state 30th in 2011. Continue Reading →
In his January State of the State address, Gov. Otter said he hopes to find an Idaho-specific alternative to expanding Medicaid eligibility.
Idaho policymakers may claim more leeway to lower Medicaid repayment rates based on a legal brief filed by the Obama administration yesterday. In a move that frustrated health care providers, the administration said states may contain Medicaid costs by reducing reimbursement rates. That’s according to The New York Times.
The Idaho Medical Association’s Susie Pouliot calls Medicaid reimbursement rates “a fine balance,” explaining that some medical practices in the state have already begun to limit the number of Medicaid recipients they treat.
“Especially in a rural state like ours, policymakers need to balance access to care with cost savings at the expense of providers,” Pouliot says. Continue Reading →
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey show 28.7 percent of adult Idahoans who receive benefits are also disabled. Nationally, that rate is 30.4 percent.
The survey data includes people who are 18 or older and receiving Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (also called food stamps).
Census data shows there are 214,772 people in Idaho who fall into this category, 61,639 of whom have some type of disability. Continue Reading →
Emmett, Idaho resident Rebecca Smither (left) talks with Dr. Jennifer Petrie (right). Petrie is a graduate of the WWAMI program and now practices in Emmett.
The Legislature’s main budget panel has approved funding for five additional medical school seats in the WWAMI program, according to the Spokesman-Review’sEye on Boise blog.
The WWAMI acronym represents the five western states that send medical school students to the University of Washington on state-sponsored reduced tuition. Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho don’t have their own med schools, and since the 1970s they’ve been in this partnership with the University of Washington.
Idaho’s gross state product grew by less than 1 percent in 2011, according to the Idaho Department of Labor and Bureau of Economic Analysis. Gross state product is the total value of all goods and services produced within a state. At the national level, gross domestic product, is used as an economic indicator to gauge things like recessions, recoveries and depressions.
Bureau of Economic Analysis / U.S. Department of Commerce
Mike Chakarun is tax policy manager for the Idaho State Tax Commission.
A left-leaning tax policy group recently put out a short little report about the state corporate income taxes paid by IDACorp. That’s the holding company of Idaho’s largest electric utility, Idaho Power. The report claims IDACorp paid no state income taxes nationwide from 2007 through 2011. It led StateImpact to a larger question: What information do lawmakers have when they make big tax policy decisions?
After six hours of debate over whether Idaho should build a state-based health insurance exchange, one lawmaker paused for a little levity.
In his lukewarm support for the state-based exchange, Sen. Marv Hagedorn (R-Meridian) said, “I can’t ride this pig if it’s a federal exchange, I can ride it with spurs on if it’s a state exchange.”
Exchanges, or online health insurance marketplaces, are a cornerstone of the federal health care law. According to The Kaiser Family Foundation, Idaho is one of 18 states with plans to create a state-based exchange. Twenty-six states plan to default to a federally-operated marketplace.
The debate in Idaho has been going on for the last couple of years. Many Republican lawmakers said they wanted to wait for an outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the health care law, and the 2012 presidential election, before committing to a state-based exchange in hopes the law would get reversed. Continue Reading →
The Idaho Senate is heading into its fifth hour of debate on a bill written by the governor’s office to create a state-based health insurance exchange. Afternoon committee meetings have been canceled.
Debate stopped and started after a motion to send the proposal back to committee to be amended, and a motion to begin amending the bill on the Senate floor. Both failed.
The arguments for and against a state-based exchange are familiar. The senators in favor of a state-based exchange say Idaho will be better off if the online insurance marketplace is run locally, rather than by the federal government. Those against a state-based exchange are largely against the federal Affordable Care Act, altogether, and don’t want to engage with the law in any way.
As debate continues, you can follow along with Idaho Public Television’s live webstream. We’ll have a full report once the vote is tallied.
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