|
Subscribe Now: Alaska Health Policy Review
There is no other publication like it. Download a complimentary copy of the April 18, 2008, issue of the Alaska Health Policy Review. This legislative wrap-up issue features three articles: AARP Alaska 2008 State Legislative Agenda Final Report; Hunger: The Invisible Health Crisis; and Foraker Releases Health Insurance Plan for Nonprofits. In addition the issue includes an end-of-session bill summary, and a summary of the disposition of recent Certificate of Need applications.
Alaska Health Policy Review is the comprehensive, authoritative, nonpartisan source for health policy matters in the state of Alaska. It is a publication of the Alaska Center for Public Policy.
During the legislative session AHPR is published electronically every week and monthly the rest of the year. Some of our current subscribers include:
- several Alaska legislators
- Foraker Group
- University of Alaska
- Rasmuson Foundation
- Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority
- Alaska Public Health Association
- Alaska Primary Care Association
- and many others!
A selection of published in-depth interviews includes:
- Senator Bettye Davis, Chair of the Senate HESS Committee.
- Dr. Jerome List, Alaska Medical Director of Mountain-Pacific Quality Health Foundation, who raises important questions about quality and accessibility for Alaskans with Medicare insurance.
- Senator Hollis French, author of SB 160 Mandatory Universal Health Care.
- Representative Peggy Wilson, House HESS Committee Chair.
- Representative Sharon Cissna, Co-Chair of the Legislative Health Caucus and a member of the House Health, Education, and Social Services Committee.
- Paul Sherry, the CEO of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
Recent articles and features include:
- A detailed analysis of recent state and federal policies affecting Alaska's Denali KidCare, which insures thousands of children from low-income families in Alaska.
- An in-depth summary of the joint Committee hearing of SB 160 Mandatory Universal Health Care.
- A history of controversial Certificate of Need legislation in Alaska, including some curious findings in the fiscal notes.
- A list of health policy lobbyists in Alaska, their employers, and their incomes.
- A summary of work-to-date of the Governor's Health Care Strategies Planning Council.
- A calendar of key upcoming meetings and events that may influence health policy in Alaska.
A 12-month subscription to Alaska Health Policy Review is available for $850. Substantial discounts are available for organizations with multiple subscriptions, and for smaller nonprofits. For-profit corporations have a separate rate schedule. Don't miss an issue!
Send orders and inquiries to Lawrence D. Weiss at health.policy.review@gmail.com, or call (907) 276-2277.
|
|
|
Dear Colleague:
The Alaska Center for Public Policy is a nonprofit organization. We receive no foundation funding (although we hope that will change in the future). Currently, all our revenue comes from subscriptions to
Alaska Health Policy Review
(see the details on the left side bar), and your donations.
I urge you to consider sending us a donation so we can continue to send you this newsletter, and do the other things we do. You can easily send us a donation by going to our home page, and clicking on the donation logo in the upper right hand corner.
Talking about "what we do," I started a new section on our website. On the left navigation bar is a new tab titled, "ACPP Weekly Journal." Click on it, and it will give you a week by week outline of what we have been doing to promote public policy that benefits low- and medium-income families in Alaska.
The last couple of months during the legislative session have been very busy for us. We produced dozens of blog postings and newsletter articles, provided testimony at several hearings, and sent in written testimony or made phone calls on others. I was asked by the Anchorage Daily News to be an official ADN blogger on the subject of health care policy and related issues. In addition, we provided information and assistance to several state-wide coalitions and a number of legislators.
Please take a look at the sidebar on the left side of this newsletter that introduces the
Alaska Health Policy Review.
Visit the new ADN blog at www.adn.com/healthcareblog. And remember to check out our primary web site at www.acpp.info. See the latest blog entries on a variety of policy issues, and use our custom built Alaska policy search engine.
As always, I am eager to hear your comments about how we can improve.
Lawrence D. Weiss Ph.D., M.S.
Executive Director
ldweiss@acpp.info
|
|
|
One of Every Thirty-nine Alaska Homes may be Foreclosed
According to a recent article in the Anchorage Daily News, "While Alaskans aren't seeing the number of failed loans as some places in the Lower 48, plenty of people in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough are feeling the pain of bad home-buying decisions. Real estate agents in the Mat-Su area last year said they started seeing a dramatic rise in the number of foreclosure sales." In March of this year, for example, there were nearly 300 foreclosures in the Mat-Su area.
A study just released by the Pew Charitable Trusts paints a somewhat more grim picture of foreclosures in Alaska:
- 1 in 39 Alaska homeowners is projected to experience foreclosure on their home as a result of their high-cost loan
- 23 percent of all loans made in 2005-2006 were subprime
- 29 percent of all homeowners will likely feel the ripple effects of foreclosures from subprime loans
- Affected homeowners are expected to lose $4,013 on average from property values
- $190 million is projected to be lost from the combined state and local tax base
In addition, the report highlights states that are making headway to strengthen loan underwriting standards and help borrowers avoid foreclosure--and underscores that federal legislation must complement the work being done in the states, not compromise it.
|
Every Worker in Alaska Should Have Paid Sick Days
Based on research by the Alaska Public Interest Research Group, only 60% percent of workers in Alaska have paid sick days according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This leaves 40% percent, or 119,280 workers, without a sickness policy allowing them to stay home with pay when they're sick.
A modest plan ensuring a minimum paid sick days standard in Alaska would save $9.07 per worker per week. These savings would come from reduced turnover, lower productivity losses for sick workers on the job, avoiding relatives' short-term nursing home stays, and a healthier workforce. Costs for wages, payroll taxes, and administrative expenses would be much lower: $6.47 per worker per week.
Nationally, 30 percent of workers have paid sick days for staying home with ill children, and 33 percent are covered by paid sick days when they go to the doctor. Low-wage workers have the least access to paid sick days, with only 27 percent covered. Certain industries have exceptionally poor paid sick days policies, such as restaurants (14 percent of workers have access to paid sick days).
|
|
Teacher Pay Penalty in Alaska: 16%
At a time of national debate over ways to improve the performance of America's schools, a new report reveals a trend that undermines the chances of reaching that goal: a large and growing pay penalty for those who choose to become public school teachers. Over the last decade, the teacher pay gap increased 10.8 percentage points--from a 4.3%shortfall for teachers in 1996 to 15.1% in 2006. According to Table B-4, Public school teacher and college graduate weekly wages, by state, the teacher pay penalty in Alaska is 16%.
The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground, published in March 2008 by the Economic Policy Institute, provides a detailed analysis of trends in teacher pay. In 1960 women teachers had an annual wage advantage, of 14.7% compared to other similarly educated women. This annual pay difference was reversed to a 13.2% annual wage deficit by 2000.
The study, by Sylvia Allegretto, Sean Corcoran, and Lawrence Mishel, also compares teachers' weekly pay to that of a core group of occupations with similar educational and skills requirements: accountants, reporters, registered nurses, computer programmers, clergy, and personnel officers. The teacher pay penalty translates to weekly earnings that are, on average, about $154, or 14.3%, lower than those of people in the comparable occupations. (Because teachers' annual work schedule is so different from that of other professional occupations, the report compares wages earned for a week of work as a more appropriate comparison.)
Particularly ominous for attempts to retain good teachers is the study's finding that the penalty is severest among the most experienced teachers. For early-career teachers (age 25-34), today's pay penalty is only slightly larger than in 1996 (a change of 0.5 percentage points). The brunt of the widening pay gap has fallen on senior teachers (45-54), whose pay deficit within their age group has grown by 18.0 percentage points among women (who comprise the vast majority of teachers) since 1996.
|
Hungry Children Can't Learn
Earlier this year, Food Bank of Alaska and the Alaska Food Coalition released a new report on school breakfast in Alaska. The Coalition's report found that 8,500 low-income students do not even have the opportunity to get a breakfast at school.
The Legislature was asked to put aside $1 million as an inducement for breakfast programs, which in turn would leverage federal funds, but the request did not make it into this year's operating budget.
Under the School Breakfast Program, the federal government provides reimbursements through the state to schools serving breakfasts that meet federal nutrition guidelines. Unfortunately, the School Breakfast Program is severely underutilized in Alaska. Key findings of this report include:
- Children in Alaska are more likely to face hunger than adults. Fifteen percent of Alaskan children are food insecure.
- Only 34% of low-income students in Alaska received a school breakfast during the 2006-07 school year. Alaska ranks 48th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia for participation in the School Breakfast Program.
- Among the 406 public schools in Alaska providing school lunch, 125 do not have a breakfast program.
- 8,589 low-income Alaskan children attend a school with no breakfast program. In total, 30,375 students attend schools without breakfast programs.
- Alaska stands to gain an additional $1.95 million in breakfast funding per year by bringing participation up to 60 percent of low-income students--near the level already achieved by the states with the highest participation.
Continued on ACPP web site
| |
|
|
|
