First you need to familiarize yourself with the history of long term care for the elderly from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services webpage:
In his January 1998 State of the State address, Governor Thompson proposed the creation of "Family Care," to reform Wisconsin's LTC system and directed the Department to develop legislative language for inclusion in its biennial budget request.
The Department developed a revised proposal, based on the recommendations of the work groups and the Steering Committee; on issues where consensus had not been reached, the Department made proposals that reflected the input received. The LTC Redesign Consolidated Steering Committee discussed this revised draft proposal at its meeting on April 17, 1998. In May, the Department published a further refined draft that incorporated many suggestions from the Steering Committee.
As directed by the Governor and the Legislature, the Department submitted drafting instructions to the Legislative Reference Bureau and issued a further refined proposal for Family Care on July 31, 1998. Governor Thompson included the Family Care proposal in his 1999-2001 biennial budget request, Assembly Bill 133, which was passed by both Houses of the Legislature in early October, 1999. The Family Care legislation was included in the final version of the bill.
So Wisconsin has a long standing program conceived and signed into law by a former Republican Governor which has been functioning well and helping seniors for over 15 years.
Guess who is trying to radically modify this Medicaid funded program and shift the profits over to Big Insurance... C'mon, take a wild f*ing guess....
I just caught wind of this story via Carol Wessels. She's an attorney and advocate for the elderly who helps them utilize this program. She's fighting hard against Walker's proposed changes, and can tell you all about it:
(Family Care) is Wisconsin’s community long term care program for elderly and disabled individuals. Family Care is a program that is operated through the federal Medicaid Waiver program. This means the program gets Medicaid funding and follows many of Medicaid’s rules. Family Care provides services to people who, because of their medical conditions, need help and support to stay in their homes or in a community setting such as assisted living, a group home or a supervised apartment.
(snip)
Programs like Family Care are mandatory as a result of cases like the Olmstead decision in the United States Supreme Court, that found a state violated disability discrimination rules when it had long waiting lists for community care that forced people to receive care in an institution when a less restrictive setting would be appropriate.
(snip)
Walker’s redesign proposal would eliminate some important aspects of the program. First, it would eliminate the IRIS ( I Respect, I Self-direct) program, which allows participants to self-manage their own budget for their care, providing the widest latitude to create an individual program within a budget. Second, it would replace the Managed Care Organizations that operate in various districts to run the program. It would restrict participation in Family Care only to those MCOS that can operate on a statewide basis. This is NONE of the current MCOs. To operate statewide, an MCO would have to have significant capital, the kind that only large insurance programs have.Third, it transfers oversight of the MCOs to the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance instead of the Division of Health Services. Fourth, it provides a means to eliminate the current Aging and Disability Resource Centers that provide help on a local basis to seniors and disabled individuals, by allowing this service to be contracted out. There are numerous other changes proposed that are too many to go into here.
You might ask, why the changes? Well, when you are Scott Walker, why not? He must have a good reason. Like, providing big business for out of state insurance companies and putting Wisconsin MCOs out of business. Reducing the size of government by eliminating the ADRCs. Or something like that. But definitely not improving services for elderly and disabled people. That is nowhere in this equation, or else he would have had them at the table in making the decision.
Apparently kicking a bunch of people off BadgerCare and turning down the ACA's Federal Medicaid Expansion worked out so well for everyone involved that Scott Walker has decided to do something similar for our grandparents.
What could possibly go wrong?