Wisconsin Healthcare Professionals Critique Walker Plan in BadgerCare Waiver Public Comment
Doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals, and advocates question Governor’s handling of healthcare in his administration’s latest BadgerCare waiver proposal.
Gov. Scott Walker at a Gundersen Health System facility in La Crosse.
Statewide: Healthcare professionals in Wisconsin issued Governor Scott Walker a stern rebuke in a public comment process for the Section 1115 Medicaid waiver renewal. This week, the Walker’s administration submits a five-year extension to its waiver that restricted BadgerCare eligibility for parents in order to expand it for individuals without children.
The healthcare professionals critiqued the administration’s ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ approach to BadgerCare and called on Walker to accept our federal tax dollars back into the state to fully expand BadgerCare eligibility. Under the Affordable Care Act, states can expand eligibility for Medicaid to 138% of the federal poverty line ($16,040 for an individual), with federal tax dollars paying for most of it.
Rather than making only fiscal arguments, the healthcare professionals identified the problematic assumptions in Walker’s healthcare analysis:
“We will not belabor the evidence that fully expanding Medicaid would cover 80,000 more people, save taxpayers $190 million every year, and return Wisconsinites’ federal tax dollars to the state. That information and more has been repeatedly presented to your administration.
Instead, we want to address the misperception that seems to imbue your analysis. In this waiver process and others, your administration has repeatedly assumed Wisconsinites seeking benefits are somehow morally inferior. Your administration insinuates that Wisconsinites, particularly those in poverty, want to do recreational drugs rather than hold a job, relying on others’ hard work. As healthcare professionals we stand against this mischaracterization.”
They go on to describe the patients they see everyday, including those who earn just slightly too much to be eligible for BadgerCare under Walker’s rules:
“Our patients and neighbors in poverty don’t use illicit drugs at a higher rate than the general population. Many of them are children, people with disabilities, and elderly people in nursing homes. Those who can, work. In fact, we hear horror stories of when a patient earns just barely over the eligibility limit and gets kicked off of Medicaid– leaving them in a healthcare marketplace that they simply cannot survive in. These patients in particular would greatly benefit from fully expanding Medicaid, rather than a continuation of the current waiver.
Please reconsider your negative assumptions about Wisconsinites that cloud your analysis and harm our patients. Accept the federal money that Wisconsinites have already paid and expand Medicaid. Extending this waiver is not sufficient.”
The healthcare professionals who signed the comment are members of the Healthcare for All organizing co-op, a joint effort by Citizen Action of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals. The co-op’s primary goal is to achieve universal healthcare.
The full comment on the Walker Administration’s proposed waiver can be accessed here
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.
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