As part of the Affordable Care Act, every state must have a health insurance exchange in place by January 2014. An exchange is a clearinghouse of sorts where people and small business can go to buy insurance and also find out which tax rebates they may use to help them buy coverage.
“I’ve heard people compare it to Expedia or Travelocity,” says Lisa Kaplan Howe, policy director for NH Voices for Health. “You can do an apples to apples comparison of premiums and benefits and for the first time have all the information laid out in one place and be able to go to that place to purchase something to suit your needs.” Continue Reading →
Ross Gittell testifies before the Ways and Means Committee in the NH Senate
The New Hampshire Senate is considering a bill aimed at helping the Community College System reduce the so-called “skills gap.” The problem the manufacturing sector faces is that while there are numerous skilled jobs available, there aren’t enough people qualified to fill them. To help bridge that gap, the Senate bill would offer tax credits to businesses that partnered with the Community College System to create workforce training programs.
Hot on the heels of his Q&A with StateImpact, Community College Chancellor Ross Gittell spoke in favor of the program, saying it would be a “win-win-win.” Continue Reading →
Community College Chancellor Ross Gittell breaks delves into the skills gap issue
As the national economy continues to trudge toward recovery, the Obama Administration has been pushing advanced manufacturing as a key driver for jobs growth. So over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at various aspects of manufacturing in New Hampshire. While the sector historically struggled in the transition from mill work to high-tech fabrication, today, manufacturing is thriving in the Granite State.
But to continue on a sustainable path, the sector faces one daunting challenge: The so-called “skills gap.”
In many of the state’s factories, the bulk of advanced machining and other skilled work is done by Baby Boomers, who are rapidly moving toward retirement age. And community colleges aren’t turning out enough graduates with the skills to replace them.
Recently, we sat down with new Community College System Chancellor–and economist–Ross Gittell to discuss the depth of this problem, and how he hopes the state’s trade schools can solve it. Continue Reading →
In his report, Clifford uses mainly New England examples to explain why some state foreclosure mediation programs work, why some don’t, and how states can fix their systems and prevent more foreclosures. Mediation, by the way, is when a neutral third-party helps negotiate an agreement between a lender and a borrower to prevent foreclosure. (And just FYI, Massachusetts is the only state in New England that doesn’t have some sort of state or city-headed mediation program). Continue Reading →
As usual on holidays, we won’t be posting our morning link roundup. But no worries! We’ve rustled up some cool content for the day. So do check back…and Happy Presidents’ Day!
We break down the posts that stood out the most this week.
Happy Friday, StateImpact readers! As usual at this time on a Friday afternoon, we’d like to take a moment to call up our most popular posts, just in case you missed them.
So with that in mind, we now present This Week’s Essential StateImpact!
A Look Inside An Advanced NH Factory: Our first foray into photographic story-telling was a big hit! For this post, we take you on a brief tour of Elbit Systems of America in Merrimack, and explain its importance to the resurgence of New Hampshire’s manufacturing economy. Continue Reading →
The reasons home care workers aren't guaranteed minimum wage and overtime go back decades..
Recently, the Obama Administration announced plans to change Labor Department rules so that home care workers–personal care aides and home health aides–are guaranteed federal minimum wage and overtime pay. Right now, states are allowed to decide if they want to include this class of worker under their own minimum wage and overtime laws. Many have opted not to. Since the rules change announcement, we’ve mapped which states offer these protections to home care workers, and which don’t. Most recently, we broke down a study looking at the economic benefits and drawbacks of requiring higher pay for many of these workers.
This issue has led to a key question among some of our readers: Why aren’t home care workers guaranteed minimum wage and overtime when their colleagues in hospitals and nursing homes are?
Vacant and underused malls are a continuing problem for communities
Since the economic collapse, the commercial real estate market has been faced with a glut of vacant buildings. And that chief icon of American consumerism–the shopping mall–hasn’t been spared. But that’s not to say these massive markets can’t be reclaimed. Recently, NHPR’s Word of Mouth host Virginia Prescott dished with a New York Times reporter about the rising trend of “repurposing” the American mall. Continue Reading →
President Obama is pushing for a Labor Department rules change that would require home care agencies to pay aides minimum wage and overtime.
By far, our most popular post to date is a map we created using federal data on which states offer minimum wage and overtime guarantees to home health workers, and which don’t. Right now, under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), certain classes of workers, ranging from babysitters to home care workers–personal care aides and home health aides–don’t have to be paid minimum wage.* So states are left to decide if they want to cover home care workers under their own wage laws.
And whether it’s politicians, families struggling to pay for in-home care, or the agencies that employ these workers, the rules change has been highly controversial. Continue Reading →
The Certificate of Need process faces continued legislative scrutiny this session.
New Hampshire legislators are proposing a law that would do away with the Certificate of Need process. This is a state requirement for hospitals and other healthcare facilities that want to expand or establish new medical facilities. The aim of CON is to keep redundant healthcare out of the system.
Recently, the CON process has faced legislative scrutiny in another House bill as the for-profit Cancer Treatment Centers of America pushes to build a facility in the Granite State. At the heart of that debate is two questions: Does New Hampshire actually need a specialty cancer treatment center? (Cancer Treatment Center representatives say that CON, the answer is “no.”) And if the CON process is abandoned, would the center live up to its promises to bring more jobs and money into the state’s economy?
But the Cancer Treatment Centers of America proposal is only a piece of the larger economic debate swirling around CON.
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