This FAQ explains West Virginia’s Certificate of Need (CON) laws, what they are, and how they work in practice. Using research and real-world data, it examines common claims about cost, access, and rural hospitals and finds that CON laws often limit competition and increase costs without improving care. The bottom line is that these policies […]

Lisa graduated from WVU in 1999 with a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering. Upon graduation from WVU, Lisa worked at Wilbur Smith Associates in Charleston as a roadway engineer designing drainage for the planned Corridor D road expansion in Parkersburg. In 2000, Lisa joined her family’s business, CAS Cable, as a Business Manager. During this […]

Students cannot learn and teachers cannot teach in persistently disruptive schools. This one-pager highlights reforms to strengthen discipline, restore order, and protect instructional time in districts under state intervention.

Academic recovery requires more than new leadership. This one-pager focuses on fixing fragmented standards, weak curriculum guidance, and inconsistent instruction so takeover districts can deliver a stronger, more coherent education.

State takeover should bring real fiscal accountability, not more unchecked spending. This one-pager outlines reforms to improve transparency, tighten financial controls, and ensure taxpayer dollars are tied to student outcomes in struggling districts.

West Virginia’s K–12 funding comes from three main sources: state, local, and federal. This one-pager explains what happens when a student uses the Hope Scholarship: the state share tied to that student can follow them, while local property tax/levy dollars stay with the district, and federal funds remain with public schools through targeted programs.

West Virginia’s hospital debate is missing a key piece of the financial picture Debates over hospital policy in West Virginia usually follow a familiar pattern. Hospital systems warn that their finances are weak. Industry groups say they have too many patients with government insurance. Certificate of Need (CON) rules are defended as needed to keep […]

Hospitals in West Virginia increasingly point to “payer mix” as the explanation for shrinking services and financial strain, arguing that heavy Medicare and Medicaid enrollment forces them to rely on higher commercial prices and special regulatory protections. But that claim has become a policy argument more than a financial reality. This paper examines what the […]

To many West Virginians, healthcare continues to be a burden more than a lifeline as roughly 180,000 residents, or 13.3% of adults, now facing some sort of  medical debt. This is well above the national average of 8.6% and, even worse, nearly one in four of these residents in rural Appalachia have medical debt in […]

This paper examines the growing burden of medical debt in the Mountain State and asks a simple question: Are non-profit hospitals holding up their end of the bargain? Despite receiving millions in tax exemptions and public subsidies, many West Virginia hospitals provide little direct charity care to patients who cannot afford treatment. Using federal and […]