Sweeping changes to BadgerCare have been proposed by the Department of Health Services (DHS) and are expected to be reviewed this week by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee (probably on Thursday). A new WCCF issue brief examines how the proposed BadgerCare changes would have very negative consequences for Wisconsin’s children.
The new WCCF issue brief explains the numerous ways in which the DHS proposals would result in tens of thousands of children and parents becoming uninsured and would reduce the scope of BadgerCare services for those who are able to remain in the program. It also explains several factors that make the DHS proposals even more harmful for kids than for parents.
If the DHS plans are approved, we expect at least a quarter of a million children and parents to be adversely affected by the following changes:
- Raising premiums, co-pays and deductibles, to the point where health insurance is priced out of reach of thousands of Wisconsin families.
- Making many children and parents ineligible for affordable coverage in a variety of other ways, including: a) eliminating Transitional Medicaid, b) creating a 12-month suspension of eligibility for missing a BadgerCare premium, and c) counting as part of family income the income of unrelated adults living in the household (even though those adults aren’t counted for purposes of family size and financial need!).
- Reducing the scope of health care services covered by BadgerCare for families over the poverty level.
- Creating additional red tape that will slow applications, substantially increase administrative workload and costs, and make it much more difficult for applicants or participants to get timely assistance from caseworkers.
In most respects the proposed changes will have the same effects for kids and their parents, but there are a few ways in which the adverse consequences will be greater for children:
- Premiums will be extended to children between 150% and 200% of the poverty level, which will negatively affect families who have access to employer coverage that does not include dependents. (Currently, the premiums only apply to the parents in that income range, not to their kids.)
- Children between 150% and 200% of the poverty level will be suspended from BadgerCare for 12 months if their parents miss a premium. (Now the suspension is for 6 months and doesn’t apply to children in that income range.)
- The state will no longer use express enrollment to expedite coverage of children, which will deny BadgerCare coverage for urgently needed care to kids whose applications are held up by the increased red tape from the DHS proposals (such as the new requirements to provide documentation of state residency or to verify the income of non-related adults living in the household).
If the Joint Finance Committee (which is comprised of 12 Republicans and 4 Democrats) approves the DHS recommendations, those changes can be implemented without the approval of the full Legislature, even though they conflict with state statutes. However, many of the key changes will also require waivers of federal law from the Obama Administration, because those changes conflict with federal statutes.
There is a chance, however, that the federal review process and restrictions will be eliminated – if Congress repeals the requirement to maintain children’s coverage, as the Walker Administration and many GOP members of Congress have proposed. Whether Congress allows Wisconsin and other states to significantly reduce health care coverage for children may depend on the deal, if any, struck by the “super-committee” developing a plan for cutting at least $1.2 trillion from the federal budget. We’ll follow up on that issue over the next couple of weeks.
Jon Peacock
