When Scott Walker releases his 2013-15 biennial budget with a public address tonight at the Wisconsin Capitol, I hope people are paying close attention to the health care portion. In it, GovernEr Walker will codify his cruel rejection of $4 billion in federal money proffered (not to be confused with "Prossered") to fully expand Medicaid (BadgerCare in Wisconsin) as part of the Affordable Care Act and extend direct health care coverage to approximately 175,000 additional Wisconsinites. This ignominious decision will cost the state thousands of new jobs that would have accompanied a full Medicaid expansion. It will lower the maximum income threshold for those who are currently childless adults on BadgerCare, kicking them off BadgerCare and over to the federally implemented, private health care exchanges that Walker so despises where they can hopefully afford coverage. It will force countless individuals, who would have otherwise been covered, to avoid preventive care and risk their lives if they become sick, while relying on the last-resort Emergency Room care that drives up everyone's health care costs.
Photo courtesy of Erica Case
On top of all of that, Scott Walker's ridiculously shortsighted decision to play politics and reject another facet of the Affordable Care Act, after already punting on the opportunity for Wisconsin to create its own exchanges, will cost Wisconsin taxpayers $250 million MORE through 2020 than if he had simply accepted the billions in federal funding. For the first three years, the feds would have fully covered the expansion and by 2020, the coverage would have dipped to 90%.
However, by rejecting the full expansion, Walker has ensured that not only will Wisconsin leave all of those funds on the table, the feds will continue to match only 60% of our Medicaid costs, as they currently do. Even John Kasich (OH), Rick Snyder (MI), Jan Brewer (AZ) and now Rick Scott (FL) accepted the steal of the deal that was laid before them by the federal government, and nobody would ever accuse any of those four governors of being even remotely left of the Tea Party.
That was OUR money that will simply move along to other states because of his rejection, in exactly the same manner this had previously happened after GovernEr-elect Walker convinced then-Governor Jim Doyle to needlessly turn down hundreds of millions of dollars of federal money that would have brought high-speed rail and sustainable jobs to Wisconsin in 2010.
So what about those "hardworking taxpayers" Walker endlessly drones on about protecting when he's bashing unions, the poor, the sick, the elderly, the left? I cannot stress this enough: SCOTT WALKER DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE CITIZENS OF WISCONSIN. He is willing to demolish the foundations of our state at the drop of a hat if it means scoring political points and to prove his ideological purity and devotion to his corporate puppet masters who paid so handsomely for his two gubernatorial electoral victories.
In the meantime, he continues to travel around the country (and occasionally the state), posturing and pandering to right-wing extremists while moving Wisconsin decades in reverse socially, economically and culturally, all with an eye toward the 2016 presidential campaign.