Wisconsin’s success in improving access to health care for children through the BadgerCare program has qualified the state for a federal bonus of $24.5 million for 2011, federal officials announced this afternoon.“Today’s announcement is fantastic news for families in BadgerCare because these funds could be used to avoid making proposed...
There have been scads of interesting and important stories over the past year relating to the Wisconsin budget and the effects of budget changes on the state’s families. The Wisconsin Budget Project has blogged about many of those stories, and in today’s blog post it provides a list of and links to the project’s 10 most popular posts in...
This afternoon the Walker Administration announced its plans for lapsing $123 million to the General Fund. The biennial budget requires the Department of Administration (DOA) to allocate $174 million of lapses, and today’s announcement covers just the first fiscal year – meaning that there will be at least $51 million in additional...
This week Citizen Action of Wisconsin released its 6th annual Health Insurance Cost Ranking. The report provides local information on cost, quality, and the rate of health insurance inflation. The study highlights a large disparity in health insurance costs between the different regions of the state, with some paying over $2,000 more...
As we noted in yesterday’s blog post, the Legislative Audit Bureau issued a comprehensive audit of the Medical Assistance (MA) program Tuesday. The LAB audit recommends that DHS should report to the Legislature’s Joint Audit Committee by next July on the department’s efforts to address the following seven issue areas raised by the...
Today, the Legislative Audit Bureau released their 100+ page report on Wisconsin’s Medical Assistance (MA) programs, including BadgerCare Plus, Medicaid, and long-term care programs. The economic downturn, as well as eligibility expansions, has increased the number of MA recipients to 1.2 million in January 2011 – boosting expenditures...
We are all familiar with the phrase “big things come in small packages.” For some, a specific provision in the health care reform law is just that. In a blog post on Wednesday, we examined the impact of one of the better know parts of the health care reform law, which has enabled 2.5 million young adults to be included on their parents’...
The US Supreme Court has agreed to take up two new cases in which young juveniles (age 14) were involved in crimes that led to a life without parole sentence. Recall that through prior cases (Graham v. Florida, Roper v. Simmons) the court has ruled that offenders under the age of 18 cannot be executed and that youth under 18 in...
New data released today shows that 2.5 million more young adults are covered by health insurance due to health care reform, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Traditionally, young adults have been the population least likely to have health insurance. To address this, the ACA ensured starting in September 2010, that all young adults are able...
Health care advocates in the Save BadgerCare Coalition agree with the Department of Health Services (DHS) on at least one thing – that the BadgerCare changes proposed by DHS can’t be made without a waiver of the “maintenance of effort” (MOE) requirements of the federal health care reform law. Those provisions of the Affordable Care Act...
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