PHI PolicyWorks

With the deadline to file income taxes approaching, two online resources are available to help direct-care workers receive federal and state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC) and other credits, and also access free tax preparation services: The Earn, Keep, Save MORE website, hosted by PHI, provides information on which states offer EITC and other credits, [...]

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A recent report by PHI Michigan for the Michigan Department of Community Health (DCH) provides the first demographic profile and other data on direct-care workers employed by by self-directed (SD) consumers through the Michigan (MI) Choice Medicaid Waiver Program. The report, Self-Determination and the MI Choice Medicaid Waiver Program (pdf), is based on a survey [...]

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Yesterday, the Senate Health Policy Committee moved closer to implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in Michigan by voting in favor of Senate Bill 693 (SB 693) with both Repbublican and Democrat support. SB 693 will create Michigan’s Exchange, the MiHealth Marketplace.  Although there are some concerning things in the version that was passed, we are very pleased [...]

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The Michigan Consumers for Healthcare (MCH) coalition held a press conference on October 11 to announce its support for a Senate bill to establish a state health insurance exchange and to offer recommendations on how to improve the legislation. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), every state is required to create a health insurance exchange [...]

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A recent Op-Ed by Charles Blow in The New York Times describes blue-collar and low-wage workers in simple yet powerful words. Direct-care workers are counted among those that he describes as, “They are honest people who do honest work — crack-the-bones work; lift-it, chop-it, empty-it, glide-it-in-smooth work; feel-the-flames-up-close work; crawl-down-in-there work — things that no [...]

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The Michigan Office of Services to the Aging (OSA), Michigan State University-College of Human Medicine, and PHI have partnered to address the training needs of personal care aides (PCAs) who serve clients in MI Choice, the state’s Medicaid home and community-based waiver program. Michigan’s Building Training…Building Quality (BTBQ) project will build and operate a sustainable [...]

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It is not too early to think about the upcoming tax season and ways that direct-care workers can get a bigger refund and keep more of their money at tax time.

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PHI has released a fact sheet on Michigan’s direct-care workforce (pdf). The eight-page document reveals that while demand for workers is at a historic high and growing, the labor pool is shrinking and poor job quality is adding to the difficulty of attracting and keeping new workers. These factors, warns the fact sheet, are leading [...]

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