Member, District 1199 New Mexico, National Union of Hospital and
Health Care Employees, AFSCME, AFL-CIO
As the workers’ struggle in Wisconsin unfolds, an important and
purposefully concealed part of Gov. Scott Walker’s draconian bill is a number
of massive cuts to health care affecting thousands of poor and working people
in the state.
According to the Leader-Telegram in Eau Claire, Wis., the new
budget would cut off benefits for more than 60,000 Wisconsin residents. Any
non-pregnant individual earning more than a meager $14,484 annual salary, or
133 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), would be cut off from benefits.
This would apply to recipients of Medicaid and the Wisconsin state health
insurance program, BadgerCare.
While Medicaid coverage is mainly directed to children, parents,
pregnant women and the disabled, up until now it also covered childless adults
as well, those earning up to $21,780 for an individual, or 200 percent of FPL.
An assault to women’s
access to health care
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Watch an interview with Wisconsin protester Barbara Chusid |
In response to these brazen attacks on health care in Wisconsin,
Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin issued a statement pointing out the
overall disaster that the cuts would mean to Wisconsin families, underscoring
the impact the bill would have on poor and working women.
“This bill puts working women and families at risk. More than
55,000 patients in Wisconsin get their primary and preventive health care
through the BadgerCare family planning program. For 60 percent of them, this is
the only health care they receive. … The current economic crisis has had a
deep impact on women’s ability to access family planning services. Since 2008,
2.3 million women of reproductive age have lost employee sponsored health care
coverage.” (Amanda Harrington, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin)
Democracy denied:
‘administrative rules’
By use of so-called “administrative rules” included in the
language of the bill, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services would be able
to use the state budget committee, dominated entirely by Walker’s cronies, to
unilaterally change state laws governing health care while completely bypassing
any legislative process.
In addition, the Walker-appointed Director of the Department of
Health Services is none other than Dennis Smith, a fellow at The Heritage
Foundation, the conservative think tank hostile to Medicaid. In 2009, Smith
himself authored a paper titled “Medicaid Meltdown: Dropping Medicaid Could
Save States $1 Trillion.” (The Awl)
While Walker talks on and on about letting the “private sector”
handle issues of health insurance for Wisconsin workers, in fact tens of
thousands of workers who work for private corporations are enrolled in
BadgerCare because countless big corporations provide no health care for their
employees. For example, Wal-Mart workers alone account for 10,000 recipients of
Wisconsin BadgerCare and most would lose their coverage under the new bill. (The
Awl)
Enactment of Walker’s new “administrative rules” would open the
door for more and more cuts in services to Wisconsin workers and their
families. While it is true that drastic cuts in Medicaid benefits would require
approval from the federal government, there is no guarantee that the Obama
administration would uphold the rights of workers to continue to have their health
care funded by Medicaid.
