Early this morning, the Bill passed the rules committee.
Disability rights advocates, healthcare providers, and grassroots organizers in Wisconsin and across the country are sounding the alarm as House members push forward the Budget Bill, which includes a more than $790 billion cut to Medicaid.
The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that in Wisconsin, as many as 83K Medicaid recipients will lose coverage and the state will lose approximately $400 million in federal dollars.
Unnecessary, Ineffective, and Cruel
The bill includes unnecessary and ineffective provisions like work requirements and multiple annual eligibility checks – provisions that do not save money, increase employment, or reduce fraud but do make it harder for people to get and stay insured.
Work requirements are unnecessary – a solution in search of a problem.
Data from Kaiser Family Foundation and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) shows that more than 70% of non-disabled adult Medicaid enrollees already work, and the remainder are caregivers, students, or people with chronic or catastrophic health conditions.
Wisconsin Department of Human Services estimates that implementing work requirements would cost taxpayers $66 million per year to administer and strip healthcare from 52,000 otherwise eligible Wisconsinites.
It is important to note that it isn’t just Medicaid cuts that concern disability advocates. This bill contains significant cuts to SNAP and Medicare – also critical supports that allow children, adults, and seniors with disabilities to maintain their health and live with dignity.
Increasing eligibility checks — under the false premise of rooting out “fraud” — also increases the state’s administrative costs and forces Medicaid recipients to jump through increasingly more complicated hoops.
Increased eligibility checks as well as work requirements disproportionately harm seniors, people with disabilities and families who struggle to complete complicated and time-consuming paperwork, who may be alone or ill or who may lack access to technology.
Increased paperwork and time-sensitive deadlines also mean increased possibility of errors on the part of the state and Medicaid recipients – errors which lead to loss o coverage for those who are otherwise eligible.
