FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 25, 2018
Contact: Alec Zimmerman
(608) 257-4765

[Madison, WI] — Tony Evers is lying when it comes to Governor Walker’s record on health care. As long as Scott Walker is governor, people with pre-existing conditions will always be covered – and thanks to his reforms, insurance premiums in Wisconsin are going down.

Learn more about Evers’ latest health care lie here or find excerpts below.

In attack on Scott Walker, Tony Evers misleads in claiming health care costs 50% more in Wisconsin
Politifact Wisconsin
Tom Kertscher
October 22, 2018

Continuing a series of attacks on Republican Gov. Scott Walker on health care, Tony Evers compares Wisconsin to Minnesota with a TV ad released Oct. 9, 2018.

The state schools superintendent, who is the Democratic challenger to Walker in the Nov. 6, 2018 election, uses a woman who describes her experience with Stage 4 breast cancer. She accuses Walker of wanting to play politics rather than deal with health care costs.

Then the claim we want to check is made. This statement appears on the screen, as the woman speaks nearly the same claim:

“Wisconsin pays 50% more than Minnesota for the same health care.”

So, with that statement, which is broad, Evers doesn’t directly blame Walker.

But in the context of the ad, Evers at least suggests that the governor has failed to tackle what he claims is a drastic difference in costs between neighboring states.

Evers’ claim has an element of truth, but it’s misleading in that it is overly broad.

Evers says: “Wisconsin pays 50% more than Minnesota for the same health care.”

On one measure — how much 40-year-old individuals pay for health insurance they buy on their own — the annual average premium is nearly 50 percent higher in Wisconsin than in Minnesota.

But Evers’ statement is broad, and that measure is narrow, given that the vast majority of people get their health insurance through an employer or from the government. By one measure of employer-provided health insurance, the average annual premium paid by employees was actually 3 percent higher in Minnesota than in Wisconsin.

Moreover, Evers suggests Walker has failed to address health care costs, when many factors are involved, especially in an apples-to-oranges comparison of two states.

Evers’ statement has only an element of truth and ignores critical facts that would give a different impression — our definition of Mostly False.

Read the full story here.

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