The new federal poverty guidelines, which were recently adjusted for inflation, are worth examining because they help illustrate the challenges faced by low-income working families. They show, for example, that single parents with one child are currently ineligible for BadgerCare if they have a full-time job that pays more than $8.13 per hour!

The federal poverty guidelines are updated early each year, and the 2019 guidelines that were issued in mid-January modestly increased the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). The adjustments slightly increase eligibility for many federal programs that help keep people healthy, put food on the table, and help pay for child care. An updated table on the Wisconsin Budget Project website shows the poverty level for different family sizes and how that affects eligibility for different programs. It also translates the annual poverty level figures into monthly and hourly incomes.

Examining the table on the Wisconsin Budget Project website helps show why many low-income adults in Wisconsin are still uninsured—despite the substantial progress made in 2014 and 2015 in reducing our state’s uninsured population. It also sheds light on who would gain access to affordable insurance if Wisconsin finally decides to use the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to expand BadgerCare eligibility for adults to 138% of the federal poverty level.

Here are a few interesting and troublesome implications of how the 2019 poverty levels relate to BadgerCare eligibility:

• For a single parent with one child, the BadgerCare income limit amounts to $8.13 per hour (assuming a 40-hour work week). In other words, an adult in a two-person family will be ineligible for BadgerCare if they make just a dollar per hour more than the minimum wage.
• For single childless adults, the BadgerCare income limit is $1,041 per month, which is equivalent to working 33 hours per week at the minimum wage. If they have a full-time minimum wage job, they’re not eligible. They will have to seek coverage through the federal ACA Marketplace, but those plans are more expensive than BadgerCare, and difficult for many low-wage earners to afford.
• In states that used the ACA to expand Medicaid, the income limit amounts to $8.29 per hour for a childless adult and $11.22 for a single parent with one child.

Our website has infographics that contain the new federal poverty levels and show how they relate to different categories of eligibility for BadgerCare and subsidized coverage in the federal health insurance Marketplace.

As our state debates the Governor’s proposal to expand BadgerCare eligibility to adults above the poverty level, think about the financial challenges now facing a single parent in Wisconsin who has one child and is making only $1 per hour more than the state minimum wage. Try to imagine how you would cover rent, utilities, food, clothing, transportation and other expenses for your family, and then pay health insurance premiums and deductibles on top of all those other household costs.

Jon Peacock