Dane and La Crosse Counties Are the Latest to Approve Putting the BadgerCare Issue to a Vote 

Thursday evening Dane and La Crosse counties became the 7th & 8th counties to approve November ballot measures asking voters if Wisconsin should accept the federal funding for states that expand Medicaid coverage of adults.  Accepting that federal funding would allow BadgerCare to cover more adults (including many of the parents who were made ineligible for BadgerCare in April), and it could close a large gap in the state’s Medicaid budget.

According to Citizen Action of Wisconsin, which has been working hard to promote the fall referendum, yesterday’s actions in Dane and La Crosse counties mean that one-third of the state’s voters will see this issue on their November ballot.  The other six counties that have approved an advisory referendum on the issue are Eau Claire, Dunn, Lincoln, Clark, Outagamie, and Milwaukee.  A Capital Times article reports that as many as half the county boards might endorse the ballot measure.

Rather than accepting the federal funds that would pay nearly the whole cost of expanding coverage for childless adults in Wisconsin, state lawmakers partially expanded BadgerCare coverage of those adults and offset some of the cost by cutting in half the upper income limit for parents. The belief was that nearly all of the parents losing BadgerCare coverage would get private insurance, primarily through the new health insurance Marketplace.  However, new data released this week by the Dept. of Health Services show that only a third of the adults who lost their BadgerCare eligibility have purchase Marketplace plans.  (Read more about the new data in this WCCF blog post.)

In a WI Budget Project blog post a week ago, I summarized some of the reasons why many counties are interested in putting this measure on the ballot.  It explains that in addition to wanting to help their residents have affordable health care, counties have some self-interest in seeing the federal funding come into our state.   In Wisconsin’s county-based human service system, counties pick up the tab for some health care services that in many other states would be the state’s responsibility.  If Wisconsin expands BadgerCare for adults to 138% of the poverty level, counties would enjoy substantial savings for mental health services and could either improve those services or use the savings for other purposes.

Some of the other reasons why taking the federal funding and improving access to insurance make sense can be found in WCCF’s Top 10 list.

Jon Peacock