Seven months ago, the Wisconsin Legislature hurriedly passed a bill giving the Department of Health Services (DHS) sweeping authority to rewrite the laws governing Medicaid and BadgerCare. On September 30, DHS finally unveiled a lengthy outline of its plans for cutting $554 million from the state’s Medicaid programs. Those plans include...
Sara Eskrich and I have been busy analyzing and summarizing the long list of proposals recently unveiled by the Department of Health Services (DHS) to cut $554 million from Medicaid and BadgerCare. We have completed a preliminary analysis, which you can find on the WCCF website. It outlines the changes relating to eligibility, benefits,...
The Assembly Committee on Insurance will hold an executive session Tuesday (Oct. 11) to vote on AB 210, which would put into state law a number of health insurance reforms in the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) – at least on a temporary basis. The bill was introduced by the committee chairman, Rep. Petersen, and is being pushed by...
Oct. 12 Town Hall Meeting in Madison on “Virtual PACE” It’s still unclear if there will be any public hearings on the proposals recently unveiled by the Department of Health Services (DHS) to substantially change BadgerCare for low-income Wisconsinites. (A WCCF summary of the proposed BadgerCare and Medicaid changes was posted online...
The Department of Health Services (DHS) unveiled a new webpage Monday that contains descriptions of some of their Medicaid cost-cutting plans and provides an online mechanism for the public to submit comments on the department’s proposals. Thus far, most of the measures described there are the ones approved by the Legislature in the...
The number of Wisconsinites living in poverty jumped significantly between 2008 and 2010, new figures from the Census Bureau show. Between those years, the poverty rate in Wisconsin increased from 10 percent to 13 percent, and an additional 163,000 Wisconsinites slid into poverty. To put that number in perspective, the number of...
Since the recession, Wisconsin household income has plummeted, according to new figures released yesterday by the Census Bureau. Between 2006 and 2010, median household income in Wisconsin dropped by about $3,600, or 7 percent.In yesterday’s blog post, we discussed how child poverty rose faster in Wisconsin than it did nationally. The...
The deficit reduction plan unveiled by President Obama on Monday would cut health care spending by an estimated $320 billion over the next 10 years. About $248 billion of that total would come from Medicare, and $72 billion would be cut from Medicaid. This blog post summarizes the major aspects of those spending cuts and attempts to put...
The number of children living in poverty rose dramatically in Wisconsin in 2010, according to new figures released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2010, a quarter of a million Wisconsin children lived below the poverty line, about 36,000 more than in 2009. Unfortunately, the increase in child poverty in Wisconsin is nothing new....
Last month the Department of Children and Families (DCF) made an abrupt and significant policy change to the Wisconsin Shares payments to licensed family child care providers. But in doing so, according to the non-partisan Wisconsin Legislative Council, they neglected to follow legal procedure. The new policy was released as an...
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