Tl;dr:
Who say’s no to a billion dollars? The Wisconsin legislature.
Because for the last decade, Republican lawmakers have chosen not to increase income eligibility for medicaid, aka, Badgercare to 138% of the federal poverty level. Which, in Wisconsin, is about 70-90k additional people.
Guess how much Wisconsin would save over two years if we were to just let those 70-90k people get on Badgercare?
$1.7 billion dollars.
That’s according to this new report from Wisconsin Policy Forum. The report also notes that several hundred million of those dollars would be savings that Wisconsin would continue to receive beyond the next budget cycle.
How much money have we missed out on by not expanding ten years ago in 2014? About $2 billion – yeah, there’s estimates that state taxpayers covered more than $2 billion in Medicaid costs that would have been paid by federal taxpayers had Wisconsin fully expanded Medicaid back in 2014.
Beyond savings, what else do we stand to gain beyond these savings?
- We don’t have a huge coverage gap currently, but it would insure more people or provide more affordable insurance to more people
- We could use some of the savings from Medicaid expansion to raise reimbursement rates for health care providers.
- There’s research that found that expanding Medicaid could keep more hospitals open.
- There’s also research that shows that nurse staffing ratios improve
There’s actually a whole lot of academic research on the effectiveness of medicaid expansion, because 40 other states and Washington DC have already expanded it.
Yeah we’re only 1 of 10 state that hasn’t.
But – maybe – just maybe 2025 will be different – thanks to our new legislative maps.
There’s a chance that Democrats could flip the state Assembly – and I’m just saying – expanding Medicaid is a top priority for Democrats.
And it’s going to come down to somewhere between 8-12 races. If you would like to see if you live in one of those toss up districts – check out the incredible legislative run down Dan Shafer did for The Recombobulation area and Civic Media.
