Although Congress passed a sweeping health care reform bill earlier this yearportions of which have already kicked inthe next Wisconsin governor will have a lot of decisions to make about health care in the state, from providing coverage to low-income workers to setting upor dragging his heels onthe health insurance exchanges that will provide coverage to those who can’t afford insurance on their own.
The two candidates for governor couldn’t be further apart on this issue.
Democrat Tom Barrett supports the health care bill, which is already reimbursing seniors who are in the Medicare Part D donut hole, providing tax credits to small businesses, ensuring that children with pre-existing conditions are covered, reining in insurance company abuses and allowing single adults up to the age of 26 to remain on a parent’s health insurance policy.
Barrett has also offered a plan to combine state and local government employees into one purchasing pool, arguing that it would reduce costs for participants and taxpayers by $339 million.
Republican candidate Scott Walker embraced Barrett’s plan three months after the Milwaukee mayor proposed italthough Walker won’t admit that the idea originally was Barrett’s.
But that’s where their similarities end.
Walker: Repeal Health Care Reform, Cut BadgerCare
Walker supports repealing the federal health care bill, which means that seniors, small businesses, sick kids and young adults would lose their newly created benefits.
Walker has also called for “cuts” to the state’s popular BadgerCare program, which covers all children as well as low-income adults and families. He also argued that the program had included time limits and was plagued by “all kinds of fraud and abuse,” but those assertions are false.
BadgerCare was established by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson to encourage those on welfare to find work. Generally, low-income entry-level jobs don’t include insurance coverage, while the state’s welfare program did.
Enter Thompson’s BadgerCare, which Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle expanded to include more low-income families and individuals. The program, which has enrolled almost 800,000 people, is held up as a model for other states to emulate.
Last year, Doyle implemented the BadgerCare Plus Core Plan, which serves childless low-income adults.
|
|
“The program is wildly popular,” said Stephanie Smiley, spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Services.
It’s so popular that the state had to stop enrolling people after just four months. Currently, more than 75,000 people are on its waiting list, Smiley said.
“That demonstrates the need out there for services,” Smiley said.
Roughly half of BadgerCare participants are employed or living with someone who is employed but earning a barely sustainable wage of 200% of the federal poverty level. A family of four is eligible for the program if its annual earnings are less than $44,100; a single person is eligible if he or she earns less than $21,660.
These low-income working adults don’t have affordable health insurance through their employers and they can’t afford to purchase insurance on the open market. If these employers did provide adequate coverage to all employees, BadgerCare could be drastically scaled back.
According to Smiley, the companies with the most employees on BadgerCare are Wal-Mart, McDonald’s franchised restaurants and Aurora Health Care.
What About the Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and Aurora Employees?
Walker’s “cuts” could shrink the program, but he hasn’t provided details about his plans.
Regardless, the next governor won’t be able to slash the program, thanks to the federal health care law. According to the bill, states must continue to provide the same eligibility for adults by 2014 that they did when the bill was passed in March 2010.
“We can’t go backwards,” Smiley said. “If we do that we might risk losing federal funding.”
But there’s a catch. The state must provide coverage to those who earn less than 133% of the federal poverty rate. So families of four that earn less than $29,327 or individuals who earn less than $14,404 would still be covered.
Those who had been on BadgerCare but who earn more than this lower thresholdfor example, those employees at Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and Aurorawould still have some sort of coverage through the state. But it’s up to the next governor to make that decision.
“That remains to be seen,” Smiley said. “They’re going to have access to coverage. We’re just not sure what it’s going to be.”
The next governor could provide some sort of state-based coverage or move them into the state’s health insurance exchange, which the next governor will have to implement. Or the governor could ask the federal government for an exemption if the state can claim it has a hardship, defined as a budget deficit or projected deficit in the following fiscal year.
