Economic Security

KCEP Director Jason Bailey made the following statement today about Governor Beshear’s announcement that he will accept the Medicaid expansion:

“Governor Beshear’s decision today to expand Medicaid will increase the health of Kentuckians and strengthen the foundation of our economy. It will allow hundreds of thousands of our neighbors the dignity and security of health care coverage, improving quality of life and allowing Kentucky to make much-needed progress on our poor indicators of health.

The governor’s move will mean coverage for around half of the state's uninsured adults, including workers who toil at low-wage jobs in restaurants, construction sites, nursing homes and day care centers, as well as 9,500 uninsured veterans. It will also allow the state to take advantage of a great deal, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in new income to health care providers that will translate into jobs for nurses and health practitioners across the state. The expansion is a great step toward a healthier state and a stronger Commonwealth.”

The Governor will be deciding soon whether or not to expand Medicaid eligibility in Kentucky through the Affordable Care Act. If the state does move forward with the expansion, nearly 280,000 uninsured Kentucky adults could receive health coverage. These uninsured Kentuckians who stand to benefit live across the state; in many counties, approximately half of the uninsured would qualify for coverage.

The cash balance plan for new workers proposed in Senate Bill 2 would make paying Kentucky’s unfunded pension liability harder by adding approximately $55 million in state costs over the next 20 years, according to the actuarial analysis produced for the bill.

The state’s task force on public pensions heard consultants’ recommendations this week that include several ways to raise employee costs and cut benefits, some of which may not be legal. Yet even if all of the recommendations were to become law they would only reduce a small portion of Kentucky’s unfunded pension liability.

This limited impact and emphasis on employee sacrifice are the results of an approach that includes just one revenue measure (taxing retirement benefits) rather than the kind of broad, long-term revenue plan that is needed to truly address the problem.

The share of Kentuckians without health insurance dropped last year, according to Census Bureau figures released today. 14.4 percent of Kentuckians did not have health insurance coverage in 2011, a decrease from 15.3 percent in 2010.

An increase in the federal minimum wage to $9.80 an hour would raise wages in Kentucky by $606 million over the next three years and benefit one out of every four of the state's workers, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Contrary to stereotypes, increasing the minimum wage would primarily benefit adults whose families depend on these jobs to make ends meet.

The report examines the impact of legislation introduced in both houses of Congress to incrementally raise the federal minimum wage from its current $7.25 an hour to $9.80 an hour over three years. The proposal would also raise the minimum wage of tipped workers to 70 percent of the regular minimum wage.

We previously reported (here and here) that the state will likely incur little cost associated with the expansion of Medicaid beginning in 2014 to around 300,000 Kentuckians. But in fact the expansion could actually save the state between $140 million and $828 million over the first six years of the law, according to a report by the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The 2014 expansion of Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act will benefit Kentuckians substantially, while the federal government will largely pick up the bill. According to one analysis, Kentucky will see a 37.3 percent increase in Medicaid enrollment at only a 3.5 percent increase in state Medicaid costs.

The economy is growing, but job growth is happening way too slowly. To make matters worse, low wages keep many of those Kentucky workers with jobs from meeting their families’ basic needs.

In Kentucky, the big job losses since the beginning of the recession have been in middle-skill industries like manufacturing and construction that have historically meant middle-class wages for workers without a college education. Kentucky has lost a net 35,400 manufacturing jobs since December 2007 and 18,800 construction jobs.[i]

Senate Bill 118, which passed the Senate yesterday, would require applicants for all public benefits to provide proof of lawful presence in the United States. While the bill’s proponents say it is needed to bar illegal immigrants from state and federal public benefit programs, the legislation instead threatens benefits for citizens most in need of assistance, adds costs to the state and promotes inaccurate stereotypes about immigrants.

According to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 200,000 fewer non-elderly Kentuckians had health insurance through an employer in 2010 than in 2000. The report finds that employer-sponsored insurance declined 9.3 percentage points over that period. Only 58.7 percent of Kentuckians under age 65 had this type of coverage in 2010.