Walker Plan Would Cut 65000 From BadgerCare
18.05.12
Roughly 65,000 people—including 29,000 children—would leave Wisconsin's BadgerCare rolls under a Walker administration plan to cut more than a half-billion dollars from Medicaid.
The 65,000 person estimate was released by the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. It assumes people will leave BadgerCare for a variety of reasons, but that many will leave because they decide they can't afford the premium increases proposed by the Walker administration.
Dennis Smith, Walker's Health Services Secretary, told lawmakers on the budget committee that his plan was not forcing anyone off BadgerCare, "The overall cost of Medicaid will continue to increase, our budget will increase. What we're talking about is trying to slow the rate of growth of the program that looks more in line with the overall economy."
But Smith's characterization of the plan--and the way he presented it--got under the skin of Poplar Democratic Sen. Bob Jauch, "It appears, Mr. Secretary, as though you're talking about widgets instead of people."
Source: Ashland Current