Surprise billing – an issue that consumer advocates have been working to solve for years – happens when you get an unexpected, high medical bill from an out-of-network health care provider you didn’t know about. You couldn’t avoid it – you had a medical emergency and were powerless to control who treated you at the...
Category: News Posts
New Bilingual Guide on Pregnant Women’s Civil Rights
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson released flyers in English and Spanish to explain the accommodations an employer must provide under a law passed in 2017 for employers with 15 or more employees. This law supports working women’s healthy pregnancies. The flyer outlines what pregnancy accommodation laws are, the rights that pregnant employees have in the...
Expected Proposed Rule Puts Immigrants at Additional Risk
The Department of Homeland Security intends to propose significant changes to the way the “public charge test” in federal law is applied to certain immigrants seeking to obtain legal status (legal permanent resident or “green card holder”). If the proposal becomes law, receipt of any of a broad array of public benefits could negatively affect...
NoHLA Board Member Spotlight: Misha Werschkul
Misha joined our Board of Directors in 2014 after witnessing the impact of NoHLA’s research and advocacy on health policy in Olympia. Misha is no stranger to small organizations that pack a policy punch! As the Executive Director of the Washington State Budget & Policy Center, she helps make sure the state budget delivers on...
High Drug Costs but Few Expectations for Change
In 2017, we spent much of our time defending the Affordable Care Act. With all the squabbling about the system we have, Washington, DC was less focused on how to improve it. The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows over half of the public (52%) wants legislation to bring down the cost of prescription drugs...
Medicare-for-All Gains Steam
Another percolating issue is a Medicare-for-All proposal to extend this program for older and disabled adults to be available to all. The Kaiser poll finds only one-third (36%) of Republicans support it, until it is framed as an option for anyone who wants it (but people could keep the coverage they have) – then their...
Political Discord Brings a New Generation of Activists
A new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that one in five Americans have taken to the streets to rally or participated in political rallies since early 2016. Twenty percent of these “rallygoers” had never attended before. Nearly half (46%) of them attended in support of women’s rights, 28% for the Affordable Care Act and...