Ever heard the story of the frog in the pot? Where the temperature increases so slowly that the frog doesn't realize the danger until too late. If you had to pick a real-world equivalent, chances are you'd point to the skyrocketing prices of health care. Luckily, there is a way to strike back a blow this year by expanding Medicaid to improve BadgerCare.
By now, you've no doubt heard about the fight between the Legislature's Republicans and Gov. Tony Evers over BadgerCare (Medicaid) expansion. How accepting the federal funds would ensure 82,000 working Wisconsinites in jobs like food service and homecare would gain access to quality affordable health care with far lower out-of-pocket costs than private insurance. Obamacare provided the option for states to get several hundreds of millions of dollars a year extra from the federal government by simply expanding their Medicaid programs. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have taken the extra money. Only 14 governors, mostly from the South, have refused this money, including Scott Walker who felt taking ObamaCare money would hurt his presidential campaign fundraising from the radical, rightwing Republican contributors.
Beaking away from the complicated and costly policy of the Scott Walker years of refusing federal dollars to expand our BadgerCare would provide the state $324 million in this current state budget alone. Savings that could be reinvested in long term care, dental or mental health services and even non-medical expenditures such as schools. Or how expansion would help moderate income people afford medication treatment for opioid dependency.
All of Our Health Insurance Premiums Increase
What you may not have heard is what it means to those of us with private health insurance. Research, including my own, has consistently shown that expanding Medicaid is connected to lower private insurance premiums. Most recently, it was shown in a report commissioned by Wisconsin’s Insurance Commissioner that private insurance is 7-11% lower in places that have expanded Medicaid (the national name for our state’s BadgerCare program). At the cost of today’s average Silver plan, the most common plan, that translates to between $456 and $652 per year for an individual, or between $1,470 and $2,100 for a family of four.
Why is this? Well, most simply, it turns out we’re all in this together. Hospitals face serious losses, known as “uncompensated care,” when people come into emergency rooms without coverage. Hospitals factor in this uncompensated cost when setting rates for private insurance. If uncompensated care is low, like from Medicaid expansion, hospitals have less justification to raise private rates. Also, many employers of lower-income workers don’t offer health insurance, and on the individual marketplace, the out-of-pocket costs of some plans cause some workers to not even bother. Meaning that, oftentimes, only those who know they need coverage, those sicker on average, end up signing up; increasing the “risk pools” of insurance plans. The Insurance Commissioner’s report shows that less than half of those eligible for BadgerCare under expansion are currently enrolled in private insurance. The individual marketplace, Healthcare.gov, was never designed in the Affordable Care Act for those denied BadgerCare. This whole debate, where most states have expanded but Wisconsin has not, is thanks to a 2012 Supreme Court decision and the recalcitrance of politicians.
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We cannot have an effective, affordable, just health system where some people are in it and some are not. Wisconsin is already one of the most expensive places for health care not just in the nation, but on the entire planet.
Yes, we need to demand affordable prescriptions from pharmaceutical corporations (also removed from the state budget by the GOP) and allow individuals and employers in our state to buy into a “public option” as we move toward a Medicare-for-all national system. But if you want to make dent on the price of our healthcare and insure literally tens of thousands more working Wisconsinites this year, then urge our state to expand BadgerCare. We’re all paying more to cover fewer people, that makes no sense. Call your legislators today.
Kevin Kane is director of The Organizing Co-op Incubator, Citizen Action of Wisconsin.
