Legal Action of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court today, seeking an order that the state must start enrolling some of the childless adults who are on the BadgerCare Core waiting list. The list of people seeking to get into the childless adult coverage was initiated in October 2009, but the state has never lifted the moratorium on new enrollment – even though money to lift that freeze was included in the biennial budget bill last spring.

The freeze has caused enrollment to plummet as some of the people in Core Plan become ineligible and as others fail for one reason or another to renew their enrollment in time (e.g., if they move and don’t get the renewal notice, or if they can’t afford the annual fee). That sort of attrition is normal, but the difference is that the freeze means that once they drop off the program they can’t back on. 

The chart above shows how the waiting list had climbed to over 131,000 in late May of this year, as Core Plan coverage contracted at an alarming rate, and fell below 26,000 in April (a drop of more than 60% since January 2010).

The Wisconsin Budget Project Blog examined this problem in a late April blog post.  We’re currently analyzing the enrollment and budget data and will comment in more detail about the Core Plan early next week.  In the meantime, you can read more in David Wahlberg’s article in the State Journal.  

Jon Peacock