Required Reports Are More than a Year Overdue Wisconsin Citizen Action filed an open records request last week seeking data that the Department of Human Services (DHS) promised to release in June, which will show how many of the adults that the state knocked off BadgerCare have gotten insurance through the new federal Marketplace. I’m glad that Citizen Action and Senator Baldwin have been pressing DHS to release the data in question, because I’ve been waiting quietly for well over a year for another important set of BadgerCare data, and the patient approach has been a failure. In blog posts today and tomorrow I’ll provide a little background on the two sets of data – starting now with the much lower profile set of reports, relating to the changes made to BadgerCare two years ago.
Effect of premiums for adults over 133% of FPL – In July 2012 Wisconsin initiated changes to BadgerCare and Transitional Medicaid for parents and childless adults. Those changes include applying premiums to more adults, increasing premiums for others, and lengthening the penalty period for missing a payment. The increased premiums are similar to those for plans purchased through the new insurance Marketplace, and the Walker Administration pitched the changes to state legislators and federal policymakers as an experiment to pre-test in BadgerCare some of the policies that would take effect in 2014 for subsidized private coverage.
The Medicaid plan amendments that authorize this “demonstration” project require DHS to submit data quarterly on the effects to participation in BadgerCare and Transitional Medicaid. The department did submit two reports with 2012 data – one late that year and another (which doesn’t seem to be accessible online) early in 2013 – but DHS hasn’t released any reports on the BadgerCare demonstration since then! The first two reports showed a very sharp decline in BadgerCare participation after the premiums were increased in size and expanded to cover more adults.
The BadgerCare changes in 2012 were a prelude to the much more substantial changes made this year, which eliminated BadgerCare eligibility for parents and childless adults over the poverty level (though some adults over that income level may be eligible for Transitional Medicaid). The much more dramatic changes this year may help explain why only a small group of policy wonks have even noticed that the state hasn’t kept its promise to report the results of the experiment begun in 2012. Nevertheless, that information could be very useful – not only for policymakers in Wisconsin, but also in other states and in our nation’s capital, where the impact of higher premiums is a hotly contested matter.
I hope the long blackout on data relating to the effects of the 2012 experiment isn’t a harbinger of foot-dragging on the eagerly-awaited data about the effects in 2014 of cutting in half the income ceiling for adults in BadgerCare. I’ll discuss that data set in tomorrow’s blog post (which can now be found here). Jon Peacock
