Little known and much overlooked in our call to solidarity with Wisconsin public employees is a provision buried in the bill that lays the foundation for gutting Medicaid in the state.
From the Cap Times last Monday:
Over the weekend, public health advocates started raising the alarm, and this afternoon the non-partisan agency in charge of analyzing the controversial bill sent a memo to Democratic Rep. Peter Barca that would seem to confirm complaints that the Medicaid provision, buried deep in the budget-repair bill, would give the Walker administration unprecedented power to revamp the state's BadgerCare programs without following the legislative processes, public vetting, and even state laws normally required.The memo from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, a response to Barca's request for a list of non-budget items that Walker has folded into the budget-repair bill, some with far-reaching policy repercussions, focuses on the Medicaid clause as an item "that should be noted" because "while the provision may result in significant savings in the future...it would remove the entire Legislature from determining substantial elements of the medical assistance program."
The provision "could potentially give broad authority to the Department of Health Services, with approval of the Joint Committee on Finance, to signficantly modify the medical assistance program and supersede most statutory provisions regarding the program," LFB director Bob Lang writes in the memo.