“Leah Vukmir is a nurse, military mom and conservative.” It’s the tagline the far-right Republican state senator uses in her campaign against Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin. On her website, Vukmir poses in bright nursing scrubs above her health care platform that would take such care away from hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites with a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). “Period,” she adds, in case her heartless stance was somehow unclear.
Vukmir dons the nursing profession to shield her legislative history of votes to either take health care away from Wisconsinites or render it unaffordable for many patients. On her website, she states: “Being a nurse means caring for people, listening to them and doing everything you can to help them.” Her voting record appears to show the opposite is true for Vukmir.
In fact, she’s so eager to be known as a nurse that she acknowledges the derisive nickname she has around Madison pulled from the dehumanizing nurse character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “They’ve already called me vile. They’ve already called me Nurse Ratched,” she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In a 2016 profile in Milwaukee Magazine, her staffer noted that, when asked her proudest legislative achievement, she replied: “Stopping Healthy Wisconsin”—the latter an initiative to provide insurance coverage for all Wisconsinites that predated the ACA.
In a midterm campaign where health care weighs heavily on voters’ minds, her hardcore vow to repeal the ACA and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions is strange. Since she was first elected to the Wisconsin Assembly in 2010, her actions against health care coverage have even been to the right of most of her fellow Republicans.
Why would a person proud of being a nurse take such a strident stand against Wisconsinites getting the care they need? Vukmir is not fond of answering press questions, so draw your own conclusions after you consider a potential common thread amid her health care votes, asking yourself: Has Leah Vukmir sided with insurance companies over the health of people of Wisconsin?
Thwarting Medicare
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) writes model bills siding with its insurance company members, and Vukmir sits on ALEC’s board of directors as chairman emeritus of the rightwing, corporation-funded group. The Center for Media and Democracy shed light on her actions after winning a 2013 open records lawsuit against Vukmir. The documents showed ALEC wrote model legislation given to Vukmir on “how to thwart Medicaid expansion” in states, including a script to “parrot.”
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While her Medicaid-expansion opposition is her most high-profile, anti-health care stance, there are more examples of bills where Vukmir basically admits to siding with big insurance companies, including the following:
• Vukmir was one of just 16 legislators who voted against a bipartisan bill requiring insurance companies to cover cochlear implants and hearing aids for deaf children in 2009. Two years later, she introduced bills to allow insurance companies to skirt paying not only for cochlear implants but mental health and autism coverage as well.
• Vukmir was the only state senator to twice vote against a bill to ease costs for cancer patients needing oral chemotherapy pills. She told the media she voted no due to her “opposition to putting mandates on insurers.”
• Three times in her political career (2004, 2007, 2010), Vukmir voted against mental health parity legislation to bring coverage for mental health care and substance abuse in line with coverage for other conditions. The legislation was widely supported by medical professionals. Lobbying against it were insurance companies.
Vukmir’s biggest backers, according to opensecrets.org, include a number of insurance companies and other groups funded by large insurance corporations. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign shows 226 contributions to her state campaigns from individuals in the insurance industry, totaling $42,709.
Democratic State Sen. Jon Erpenbach shared his conclusion on her health care record in a recent Capital Times opinion column: “I know Leah Vukmir. She has fought hard in our state legislature. The problem is that Vukmir has always fought to let powerful insurance companies write their own rules and deny insurance coverage to Wisconsinites in need.” He concludes: “That means health care is on the ballot this November and that Wisconsinites have a clear choice in the U.S. Senate race.”
Also backing Baldwin is Shannon Thielman, a Wausau nurse and breast cancer survivor. After she appeared in a Baldwin commercial, Vukmir sent her a letter citing their profession: “As a nurse like you, I’ve made it my life’s work to help patients and save lives.” Vukmir then accuses her of unwittingly spreading lies. Thielman told reporters she was insulted that Vukmir implied she was not smart enough to understand the health care system.
“I want Leah Vukmir to know that I do not lie, and I’ve also paid enough attention to the nursing code of ethics to understand that a nurse’s responsibility is to fight for the rights of all patients—rich or poor.”
Now that sounds like a nurse.
