This week on Inland Journal:
Spokane’s YWCA says the demand is growing for its domestic violence-related legal aid services. It’s prioritizing the most serious cases, but says it can’t help everyone who needs it. We’ll talk with Sally Winn from YWCA.
"Our numbers have nearly doubled just in the first four months of this year and we're still operating with the same grants we had last year, the same staff we had last year and we're doing our very best to navigate it as best as we can."
People who buy insurance from Washington's state exchange are paying, on average, 20% more than they did in 2025. Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer says they could conceivably endure a similar ate hike next year.
"There are several things driving that. Provider consolidation, especially around hospitals, is increasing costs. We've seen insurers pointing to the costs of claims that are going up. The volume of claims are increasing. And there's something known as upcoding, which is also having an impact, where there's a code for a procedure that is provided that's more costly than maybe what was actually provided. That is an area of fraud that should be investigated."
We’ll learn about the challenges involved in helping seniors who are battling mental health issues and the signs to look for that someone you know might need help. Kyrsten Weber talks with Jams Stuivenga from the King County non-profit Sound Generations.
"There are a lot of social beliefs about getting older, the idea that we're just going to decline until we die. That's not very helpful. That's not accurate. Obviously, there are changes in our capacity, our functioning, but it can be varied case by case."
It’s early in wildfire season. Fire officials around the Northwest are bracing for a difficult summer and fall. We’ll talk with Colville Confederated Tribes Executive Director Cody Desautel.
"[The] Colville [reservation] has more experience with catastrophic fire than anywhere else in the state. If you go back to even just 2015 for us, we've seen 900,000 acres of a 1.4 million acre reservation burn in a decade, so our membership is particularly aware of the potential of wildfire and what those impacts are."
