There are lots of reasons why Wisconsin should expand BadgerCare, but a graph in a Kaiser Commission report issued last week makes it especially clear. That bar graph, shown below, vividly illustrates that from a budget perspective no other state has nearly as much to gain as Wisconsin from expanding Medicaid coverage for low-income adults.

The graph is very important because many state legislators – Republicans as well as Democrats – have said that the proposed cuts to the Wisconsin budget are much too deep and should be reversed.  However, Republican leaders seem to be pinning all their hopes for mitigating those cuts on the possibility that state revenue estimates will be increased significantly this week. If those revenue estimates fall short of the lofty hopes of legislators seeking to mitigate the budget cuts, it will become even more difficult for state lawmakers to continue to resist the politically popular option of substantially improving the budget by expanding eligibility for BadgerCare.

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated in February that expanding BadgerCare to all adults below the poverty level would yield a net budget savings of $345 million, and we expect that figure to grow when it is recomputed in the next couple of weeks. $345 million would be enough funding to restore the $127 million the Governor proposed cutting from public schools in 2015-16; to remove the damaging cuts to SeniorCare, personal care services and community health centers; and to restore almost two-thirds of the $300 million cut to the UW System.

A Wisconsin Budget Project Blog post summarizes some of the other findings of the Kaiser Commission’s report.  And for a much more comprehensive synopsis of the compelling reasons why state lawmakers should expand BadgerCare, see WCCF’s Top 10 List.

Jon Peacock