December 31st, 2011, was a date we heard a lot about with regard to the Wisconsin Medicaid budget; however, it has come and gone without too much commotion. Let’s backtrack and discuss the significance of this arbitrary deadline, and look ahead to what may happen now that it has passed. To Recap: In the biennial budget, the legislature authorized $554 million in unspecified cuts to BadgerCare and Medicaid, granting unprecedented power to the Department of Health Services (DHS) to impose those changes with limited legislative oversight. Fortunately, the federal health care reform law (the Affordable Care Act, ACA) included a provision restricting states from making changes that would reduce eligibility or suppress enrollment without receiving a waiver of these maintenance of effort (MOE) provisions. Here’s where December 31st comes into play – the Wisconsin budget includes language setting an arbitrary deadline of December 31st, 2011, for the state to be granted this federal MOE waiver, or DHS is directed to remove 53,000 adults above 133% of the poverty level from BadgerCare on July 1, 2012.
In early December, the Federal government told DHS that they would likely not be able to meet the December 31 deadline. Our December 9th blog post shares more about that letter from the Feds.
Looking Forward: The Wisconsin MOE Waiver was not approved or denied by the federal government by December 31st, 2011. They are still reviewing the complex proposal, which would harm at least 168,000 Wisconsinites – WCCF is advocating, amongst others, for the rejection of this waiver. However, under state law, 53,000 adults are currently slated to lose their BadgerCare coverage on July 1. The Governor recently made statements indicating that he doesn’t see this scenario as inevitable (see Jason Stein’s Journal Sentinel story here); presumably this indicates that he is open to working with the legislature to amend this arbitrary deadline in the budget. Senator Kathleen Vinehout sponsored a bill (SB 351) which would push the deadline for federal approval back to March 1st.
Though December 31st has come and gone, we still don’t know as much as we would like about the future of BadgerCare. Hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites health coverage is at stake with these proposals. For that reason, we hope that time is taken for thoughtful, deliberate, and transparent decisions to be made, which do not result in reduced eligibility or benefits.
Sara Eskrich
