New Policy Brief: Cuts on the Rise, Health in Decline

Our new policy brief, “Cuts on the Rise, Health on the Decline” details the impact of deep budget cuts on our state's health care structures. Since the recession began, health care opportunities for Washington residents have declined at the same time that public need increased as people lost jobs and health care coverage.

Some of the findings include:

• The Great Recession has left more people in our state without health insurance.  One in seven Washingtonians have no health care coverage—880,000 people. An increase of about 170,000 since the start of the recession.
• Basic health care services have been eliminated or drastically reduced for tens of thousands of people. Due to budget cuts more than 60,000 low income working adults have lost health coverage; over 40,000 elderly and people with disabilities are getting less care in their homes, potentially forcing them into more expensive options.
• The health care infrastructure is straining to keep up. At community health clinics, the number of patients without health insurance has increased 75 percent since 2000, while hospitals provided $700 million in uncompensated care last year.

The full policy brief can be found here.