Month: September 2019

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PA Protects Against Insurance Losses Caused by Trump

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

Originally published by KRC-PBPC here. A census bureau report released on Tuesday shows that 1.9 million more Americans were uninsured in 2018 than in 2017, with the rate of those uninsured rising from 7.9% to 8.5%. However, in Pennsylvania the rate is unchanged at 5.5%, and the best estimate we have is that only 7,000 fewer people have health insurance in the state (and even that difference might just be a result of sampling error). We have better results in Pennsylvania than nationwide as a result of the aggressive steps taken by the Wolf administration to expand access to health insurance in the state. Health insurance rates are dropping nationwide because of a relentless attack by the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans on the Affordable Care Act. At the outset of his administration, Trump issued an executive order calling on federal agencies to waive and delay ACA provisions ‘to the maximum extent… Continue reading

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Some Steps Forward Amid Major Disappointments: Pennsylvania’s Enacted Budget 2019-2020

  By Policy reports

Originally published by KRC-PBPC here. By Diana Polson and Marc Stier Pennsylvania enacted a $33.997 billion budget on June 28, 2019. And for the second year in a row, the budget was in place by the June deadline. This year, unlike his first few years in office, Governor Wolf did not seek major spending initiatives and ask for new broad-based revenues. And that made it easier to reach agreement with the Republican-controlled General Assembly. Indeed, it was the members of his own Democratic Party who expressed the most dissatisfaction with the final budget, largely because it did not include the increase in the minimum wage he requested and eliminated the General Assistance program he proposed to fund after it was restored by the Courts last year. We share the disappointment about these two parts of the budget and also regret that the state’s current politics doesn’t allow our government to… Continue reading