ABC for Health: Waiting for Help, Waiting in Line: List for Health Care Program Tops 130,000
Contact: Bobby Peterson (608) 261-6939 ext. 201 (office) or (608) 444-7197 (cell)
Madison, WI – This month, the BadgerCare Plus Core Plan Wait List–the growing population of Wisconsin’s uninsured, childless adults between the ages of 19-64–broke the 130,000 mark. Enrollment in the BadgerCare Plus Core Plan reached a new low of 25,801 at the end of April, but despite plummeting enrollment, the Department of Health Services (DHS) has yet to open program to new enrollees. “On the heels of this announcement, the Walker Administration promoted their new budget surplus, and completely forgot about the 130,000+ people in Wisconsin waiting in line for health care,” says Bobby Peterson, public interest attorney and director of ABC for Health. “Instead, DHS issued a memo highlighting additional restrictions to the BadgerCare Plus program, including the Core Plan, ultimately creating more red tape and confusion between Wisconsin’s neediest citizens and affordable health care coverage,” continued Peterson.
Today, HealthWatch Wisconsin, a project of ABC for Health, released an edition of the “HealthWatch Reporter,” devoted entirely to the BadgerCare Plus Core Plan and Wait List. The Reporter is available to the media and public at the following link: http://www.safetyweb.org/
Peterson continued, “What happened to the Walker mantra of ‘we’re broke?’ As part of the rationale for keeping people on the waiting list and the proposed, dramatic cuts to BadgerCare eligibility in 2011, Governor Walker claimed that Wisconsin was ‘broke.’” The administration’s statements suggested the budget crunch tied their hands and that no money was available to help folks on the Core Plan waiting list. Recall, the Walker Administration even certified a budget deficit to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to pursue a waiver of federal rules that would permit the state to further restrict access to Medicaid and BadgerCare programs. Peterson added, “The administration should not deny affordable health care coverage to low income residents while they crow about a budget surplus. Wisconsin deserves better than this. To deny our fellow citizens access to care in a time of surplus is both immoral and repugnant.”
Peterson concludes, “For the majority of the 130,000+ childless adults on the Wait List, there are few options but the expensive emergency room. And these bills do not just disappear. Sadly, redistributed and socialized medical debts end up costing us all in the form of higher medical care costs.”
ABC for Health, Inc. is a Wisconsin-based, nonprofit, public interest law firm dedicated to linking children and families, particularly those with special health care needs, to health care benefits and services. ABC for Health’s mission is to provide information, advocacy tools, legal services and expert support needed to obtain, maintain, and finance health care coverage and services.
