Boy, is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) running scared this election. First he's flip-flopping all over the place on taking private health insurance coverage away, and now he's trying to slow down the Medicaid work requirements he has been lobbying for for years.
Now he has the chance to force low-income Wisconsinites to jump through all the hoops he wants in order to get and keep Medicaid coverage, as he's long dreamed. But now that he's in real danger of losing his seat to Democrat Tony Evers, his zeal for the project has waned. That's according to three different federal officials who've been working with the state on the necessary waiver to make the change.
"Wisconsin's been stalling," says one of them, who tells Politico that the Trump administration is ready and waiting to formally approve the waiver the state has to have to implement the changes. "It’s ended up being a lot of hurry-up-and-wait," says the official, while Julie Lund, a spokesperson for Wisconsin's Department of Health Services, says simply that they are in "ongoing conversations. … We've felt it's close for a while." Walker's communications guy, Tom Evenson, says, "The idea that Wisconsin’s been stalling is unequivocally false." Which doesn't really explain why it hasn't happened yet.
As an aside, it's sort of satisfying that the Trump administration is trolling Trump's boy Scottie on this, since the story seems to have originated from there. Walker did submit the state's application way back in June of 2017—well over a year ago. At the time, Walker touted it, saying "Wisconsin Works for Everyone is about helping people transition from public assistance into Wisconsin’s workforce, where they can build a solid financial foundation for themselves and their families." On September 27 of this year, Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, announced that they had "finalized the terms for our next innovative community engagement demonstration, which we expect to deliver to the state very soon." Trump officials say that the state she was referring to is Wisconsin, and in the last three weeks, it's been held up by the state.
A GOP strategist in the state, Brandon Scholz, says that Medicaid work requirements would help Walker because they would appeal to the state's independents, "a mixture of working-class families [like] Joe Lunch Bucket and college grads." Walker seems not to agree. That could be because Evers has been running hard on healthcare issues for the entirety of the campaign, including attacking Walker for refusing Medicaid expansion.
It's a potent issue nationally, and Wisconsin isn't immune. Walker might look dumb, but he knows when he's in trouble, and he knows why.
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