Statement from WCCF Executive Director Ken Taylor on Today’s Medicaid Announcement:
Walker Medicaid Proposal is a Significant Step Backwards

February 13, 2013


The Governor’s Medicaid proposal would be a significant step backwards in access to affordable health care for low-
income parents who are struggling to feed and house their families. Almost 14 years ago, under the leadership of Governor
Thompson, Wisconsin expanded BadgerCare coverage to parents with incomes up to 200 percent of the poverty level – to
ensure that low-income working parents had access to affordable health care. Walker’s plan would cut in half the
BadgerCare income ceiling for parents.

The Governor’s proposal would improve access to coverage for some adults who don’t have dependent children, but it
squanders a fantastic opportunity to serve significantly more people and create more jobs, at less cost to the state. And in
the process, his proposal could make nearly 90,000 parents ineligible for BadgerCare and Medicaid.

Some of the parents who lose their BadgerCare coverage will move into the new health insurance exchanges. But that
coverage wasn’t designed by Congress to serve lower income families. Some of those parents will be ineligible for
subsidies in the new exchanges, and others may not be able to afford the premiums, co-pays and deductibles that will far
exceed the current costs in BadgerCare for parents who are near the poverty level. Thousands of parents now in
BadgerCare are likely to become uninsured.

In short, while many other states are using the Affordable Care Act to improve access to affordable public coverage, the
Governor’s plan would take Wisconsin’s coverage for parents in the opposite direction. We applaud the Governor for
wanting to improve access to care for some of the uninsured childless adults in Wisconsin, but we hope policymakers will
take a careful look at other options that will serve more people at a substantially lower cost for the state.


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