Education in Walker budget- declining again

I know our governor is paid off and wants to wreck public services any chance he gets, and nowhere is this more flagrant that it is with the K-12 education budget. Our media originally tried to protray Walker's proposed education budget as some kind of "increaed investment", because it plans to slightly increase K-12 funding to public schools between 2013-2015, but still leaves us around $600 million under the total amount we had in the 2009-2011 budget.

Even the Journal-Sentinel had to tell its readers the truth about how Walker's education plans add little to public education, has the money go toward property tax relief and not instruction, and it sends huge amounts of money to voucher schools.

For public schools, Walker is proposing a 1% increase in state general aid, though he has also proposed several other separate increases in state money for specific items.

But Walker is also rejecting an increase in the state-imposed cap in revenues that public schools are allowed to raise from both the state and local property taxpayers. That means that school districts would have to hold a voter referendum to spend any more in public money than they do now.

Walker's proposed increase in state general aid for public schools would be $129.2 million over two years. For the much smaller system of voucher schools, the increase would be $73 million - $45 million from the state and $28 million from local property taxpayers.

Walker's giveaway to the voucher organizations (who have the last 3 GOP Assembly speakers lobbying for it at the Capitol) is made even more obvious when you look at the Department of Public Instruction's budget request for 2013-2015.

When the DPI made their budget for 2013-2015, it asked the Governor to give back $574 million in general K-12 school aids and tax credits. Walker didn't even give them half of that. Likewise, Walker would raise the amount of money going to voucher schoos above and beyond the $56 million increase that DPI asked for. And scarier, Walker's education plan would allow other districts to be opened to vouchers, whether the majority of taxpayers in those places want it or not.

Among the choice programs and initiatives funded in Governor Walker’s budget are:

Wisconsin Parental Choice Program: Open the choice program to school districts with at least two underperforming schools (those receiving school report card grades of "fails to meet expectations" or "meets few expectations"), at least 4,000 students, and at least 20 students intending to participate in the program. This expansion will be capped at 500 students statewide for fiscal year 2014 and 1,000 students statewide for fiscal year 2015. Eligibility requirements for students would be similar to current choice program eligibility requirements.

Now explain to me how these schools will be judged to be "underperforming?" Through test scores? Graduation rates? Not doing enough Louisiana and Florida-style "teach to the test" curricula to placate the Michelle Rhee crowd? It's a system that is set up for massive cheating and distorted outcomes that have little to nothing to do with preparing students for further learning and the adult world. Instead, it is a blatant scam intended to defund and deligitimize public education, and it is a pathetic giveaway to campaign contributors. We'll see if it's allowed to get through as is (a similar attempt died in the Senate last budget, and there are fewer GOPs in the Senate now than there were in 2011).

If vouchers worked, I wouldn't be so forcefully against this plan. But as the Public Policy Forum showed again last week, vouchers do not improve educational outcomes, and many of these schools in Milwaukee do worse than Milwaukee Public Schools.

For example, the Public Policy Forum study showed that MPS and Milwaukee vouchers schools have similar levels of students from economically disadvantged backgrounds (MPS 84%, vouchers 79%) and minority students (MPS 86%, vouchers 80%), so it's pretty much an apples-to-apples group of students. But when it came to test scores on the annual WKCE test, MPS was the clear leader. MPS students had slightly higher numbers of students scoring at "proficient" or "advanced" at virtually every grade level between 3rd and 10th grades in both years than voucher schools did. In math, MPS destroyed the voucher schools, having between 7 and 20% more of its students be proficient in Math than voucher school students did.

The one advantage the Public Policy Forum says voucher schools have is that they have a lower per-student cost when it comes to education than public schools do, partly because voucher schools pay their teachers less and generally offer lower amounts of benefits (with the lower test scores, you could also argue it's proof of "you get what you pay for"). But the PPF also says that a reason voucher schools have low costs is because the offer fewer classes than public schools do.

MPCP schools may opt to control costs by not providing expensive instructional offerings, such as teacher specialists (art, music, etc.), or by offering only certain grade levels.

For example, in this year’s census, 39 of 110 MPCP schools report having no art, music, PE, library or technology specialist teachers. Schools report a total of 52 art teachers, 52 music teachers, 72 PE teachers, 30 librarians, and 51 technology teachers, which represents a program average of less than one of each type of specialist per school.

Of the 18 schools reporting five or more specialist teachers on staff, two-thirds are high schools. For many years school choice advocates have noted that the voucher value is too small to fully fund comprehensive high school costs, which likely contributes to the relatively few high schools participating in the program. As a result, schools are now able to charge high school students whose families earn above 220% of the federal poverty level the tuition difference.

So yes, voucher schools may be slightly cheaper than public schools, but its students have a whole lot fewer classes to choose from, and they don't perform as well on tests. And if the school is run poorly or goes under, there is little recourse for the school or the taxpayers that paid into them (unlike public schools, which will continue to exist year after year, and have school boards that can hold teachers and administrators to account).

With this in mind, there is no legitimate reason to expand this failing program, and to throw more taxpayer dollars at it. But we all know Scott Walker's never really cared about results, but instead cares about what gets him and the voucher interests PAID. So that's why this garbage is slated to end up in the state budget. It's up to us to expose this failure and shut it down before it takes hold and debases all types of education in this state. Because if the Walker education plan comes in, we will be less competitive economically as the level of talent coming into the workforce declines, and the most talented people will leave Wisconsin for somewhere that values critical thinking and quality education. We can't let that happen.

Walker Medicaid plan- it's even more expensive than you thought

  The state budget hasn't even been formally introduced, and Governor Walker's "Work Makes you Free" Medicaid plan is already falling apart under scrutiny. The Journal-Sentinel's Jason Stein got a sneak peek at the Legislative Fiscal Bureau's evaluation of Medicaid plans, and reports that Walker's plan would cost taxpayers an extra $250 million over the next 7 years vs. taking Obamacare's Medicaid expansion. That's a whole lot more than Walker promised to his buddies at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce last week, and would push the 2013-2015 budget as well as future years into larger deficits.

  The J-S's Stein broke down  the LFB paper on Medicaid options that was released late Friday, and the paper shows that Walker's plan will cover fewer people, while costing state taxpayers a whole lot more. In the paper, the Walker plan is similar to Scenario 2, where parents with children that make between 100% and 200% of the poverty line are thrown off of BadgerCare, and adults without kids that make up to the poverty line get covered. By comparison, the scenario where the state takes the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare is best exhibited in Scenario 5B. Here are the overall changes from current law under those two scenarios.

   Walker Plan vs. Medicaid expansion stats
   Change in state taxpayer costs
  Walker plan: +$14.4 million 2013-2015 budget, +$320.3 million by 2020.
  Expand Medicaid: -$43.7 million 2013-2015, +$66.7 million by 2020

  Change in number of enrollees in Badgercare by 2015 
   Walker plan: 9,000 LESS
   Expand Medicaid: 155,00 ADDED

   So if we took the Medicaid expansion, Wisconsinites would save $58 million in this budget over the Walker plan, and we'd have 164,000 more people covered on the BadgerCare rolls. And the LFB says these savings aren't even taking into account the "uncompensated costs" that states and local governments rack up when the uninsured use ER services in order to get treated. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated the cut in uncompensated costs that Wisconsin taxpayers would see as a result of taking the Medicaid money would be at $247 million over the next decade (as shown on page 53 of this report).

Now certainly there are other variables that could come into play, and in the J-S article Assembly Speaker (and ALEC Cabin Boy) Robin Vos along with a speaker for the Department of Health Services both claim the LFB analysis doesn't tell the whole story.

The report made public late Friday lays out figures that both Republicans and Democrats will reach for in the coming months as they debate how the state should respond to President Barack Obama's health care law. Republicans Friday rejected a key assumption of the memo as requested by [Rep. John] Richards - that the federal government would have the financial ability to carry through with its pledge of bearing the vast majority of the cost of a Medicaid expansion for states like Wisconsin.

"I just absolutely do not believe the federal government is going to keep its promise once it sees the full impact of the (health care law)," Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said....

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health Services, Stephanie Smiley, said that the Fiscal Bureau study didn't account for important factors, such as increases in the state's administrative costs due to a Medicaid expansion. "The governor deserves credit for ensuring that people in poverty are covered under his plan while also realizing that there is instability with regard to federal funding," she said.

Well sure, maybe tomorrow Dems in Congress and President Obama have a complete change of heart and throw out Obamacare...and maybe Ohio State will be credited with a win at the Kohl Center today instead of having the record show Bucky blew their doors off. And if we want to be consistent, why doesn't Vos use that same "uncertainty" excuse when it comes to the hundreds of millions of federal dollars that the state gets from the Feds in highway funding, especially with a Tea Party-backed sequester looming in 12 days?

Look, I know you TeaBags don't like Obamacare - people like what's in it, what's in effect seems to work, and it makes the GOP look really bad as a result - but just because it hurts your feelings doesn't mean it won't be the law of the land through at least 2017 (and probably well after that, given that the GOP Congressmen currently have a brand name that is equivalent to low-grade horse meat). Besides, Walker tried that routine in Wisconsin last year, delaying work on the Obamacare health exchanges in the hopes that Mitt Romney would be elected president and GOPs would also run Congress, so Obamacare would be repealed. That gamble didn't quite pay off, now did it?

I'm not even mentioning the flip side of the "future federal funding" question- what if Congress decides one day to punish states that decide to try to screw with Obamacare in this way, and cuts the Medicaid reimbursement rates to states that DON'T want to expand Medicaid, to give an incentive to take up Obamacare regulations? Strangely, that more plausible scenario is ignored by GOPs in this issue.

And as for Ms. Smiley's comment on Administrative costs, the LFB admits they don't have a figure on the subject, but it would only be more costly if more people were being covered.

Administrative Costs: The increased or decreased MA enrollment that would occur under the alternative scenarios could impact administrative costs to the state and to the multicounty income maintenance consortia responsible for making MA eligibility determinations and providing ongoing case management functions. Due to uncertainties regarding the extent of those impacts, they are not included in the preliminary estimates.

What the LFB memo doesn't mention is that it is likely that many of these positions that would take care of the extra administrative work in signing up new people for Badgercare and Obamacare coverage would be FEDERALLY-FUNDED (most federal programs fund positions to make sure the state can carry out its provisions), so the cost to state taxpayers would be relatively small. And any extra costs in administration would be more than made up for in the savings that would result in lower uncompensated care costs, as the Kaiser Family Foundation mentions ($24 million a year in savings in Wisconsin).

The LFB report and the GOP's lame excuses on Medicaid expansion give you a good idea just how much of a dog this Walker alternative plan is. It is clear that the Walker Medicaid plan is a horrible deal for taxpayers, insures fewer Wisconsinites, overloads the Obamacare exchanges, and makes outcomes for low-income individuals worse, not better. And I'm betting Scotty won't care to realize just how much more work will need to be done to correct the obvious flaws in the plan, and will double down on this failure even as the holes in his deficit-addled budget become even more apparent when it's released on Wednesday.

Cover up in the Wisc. Supreme Court?

In between the fog of all the budget talk, our screwed-up and corrupted Supreme Court also was in the headlines this week. First was the release from Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley recusing herself from a potential discipline hearing against the "man" accused of choking her, fellow Justice David Prosser. Bradley said that when Prosser attacked her

what happened in my office on June 13, 2011 was not an isolated event. Rather, it is one event in a history of abusive behavior in our workplace that has escalated from tantrums and rages, to threats, and now to phyiscal contact.

Bradley went on to say that she and Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson have taken to locking themselves in their offices out of fear of their safety, as they find Prosser unstable.

The Walker Administration tried to run interference and claim that they couldn't find a record of such a request, no doubt to try to feed the Charles Sykeses and Mark Bellings a meme that Bradley was lying. But former Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs backed up Bradley's account Friday afternoon, saying that Capitol Police were indeed contacted by a "Supreme Court official," and put in a security plan soon thereafter.

But hey, maybe Bradley was overreacting. I mean, look at the grace in which Prosser handled being interviewed on the incident.



That doesn't look like an unstable maniac, does it?

What kept Prosser from facing criminal charges for the incident was the fact that the other 3 right-wing members of the Court - Michael Gableman, Annette Ziegler and Pat Roggensack - claimed the incident did not happen or that Prosser was somehow provoked and threatened by Bradley (who is significantly shorter and smaller than Prosser), so there wasn't enough unquestioned evidence against prosser to charge him.

Roggensack was also called out by Bradley in her complaint, as Bradley said Roggensack deceived investigators about what happened that June day, and was lying when Roggensack claimed earlier this month that things really aren't that bad between the justices. Given that a key attack against Roggensack in the upcoming Supreme Court election will be that she is part of the problem with the Court's embarrassing dysfunction (along with her partisan, conservative record), you can see why she might want to say something like that.

But an ethics case remains from the incident, with Franklyn Gimbel as the head prosecutor for the state's Judicial Commission. That was also in the news this week because the Journal-Sentinel had a story where Gimbel said he had been told not to add any new evidence or scopes to the Prosser investigation by the state's Judicial Commission.

This is where things get interesting, and the cover-up angle becomes more obvious. As Patrick Marley writes in the Journal-Sentinel,

Since Gimbel began work on the case, the makeup of the commission has changed so that it is now controlled by Walker appointees. Among the commissioners are people recommended by John Gard, a lobbyist, former Republican Assembly speaker and former aide to Prosser when he was in the Legislature. In recommending the appointees, Gard told an aide to the GOP governor they were "fiercely conservative" and would "never wimp out."

Gimbel would not disclose what other options he provided to the commission to consider for continuing the case. Some legal observers have said the effort should be directed at [Judge Richard] Brown, the chief of the appeals court, because state law says the appeals court chief "shall select the judges" on the judicial panel and does not specify a role for the Supreme Court in establishing the panel.

One of those that has called for Brown to take case on his own is Tom Foley at the Illusory Tenant blog, and his breakdown of this ongoing saga is worth the read from an "inside the legal profession" standpoint.

But in addition to "fiercely conservative" judges, know what else John Gard lobbies for? The school voucher movement, which has already thrown over $20,000 toward Justice Roggensack's re-election campaign, a contribtuion Roggensack didn't report until One Wisconsin Now tracked and exposed the contribution themselves. Roggensack is often the swing vote that favors Gov. Walker and the Wisconsin GOP, like she was in the Act 10 decision in 2011 (which lifted off the whole "Prosser choking Bradley" incident). The right-wingers in Wisconsin know they might need Patty's vote for issues such as voter ID, domestic partnerships and marriage equality, and worker rights.

When you put this together with the Walker Administration "not having a record" of Bradley's complaint against Prosser, you can see where there might be more than a little coordination between the Governor's Office, the Judicial Commission, and the Roggensack campaign in making sure nothing else happens. Because these guys don't want people to be reminded of how this Court has fallen apart under right-wing rule, and how it has been a willing partner in the breakdown of Wisconsin's former reputation of clean government, as they might become very willing to kick out one of the people who has allowed the corruption and unchecked power to go on- Pat Roggensack.

The fact that the Wisconsin righties are going to such lengths to lie and protect Prosser and Roggensack is all the more reason you should throw her out, and pull the lever for Ed Fallone this Tuesday, and on April 2. I know I will.

Walker's ALEC-fueled transportation budget

It was remarkable to see how yesterday's rollout of Gov. Walker's 2-year DOT budget went as the day progressed. Early on, the story was about the initiatives itself- extra money for the Zoo Interchange in Milwaukee, and also plans to work on the Hoan Bridge and freight railroads. The concentration was on the $6.4 billion price tag over 2 years, and it seemed to be a relatively typical Walker puff piece where he took credit for things that were already asked for.

And then a little segment showed up way down in the original story.

Presenting the broad outlines of his roads plan, Walker said he will not recommend raising the gas tax or vehicle registration fees - ideas advocated by a commission he and legislators set up two years ago. Walker made the announcement at the headquarters of the 9,000-member International Union of Operating Engineers Local 139 in Pewaukee.

Walker said state property could be sold and the proceeds used to pay off an undisclosed amount of highway bonds. Asked if he envisioned selling the state plants as a means of raising more money to repay bonds, Walker replied, "Could be."

And amazingly, the Journal-Sentinel used that quote and did some real journalism to follow up on it. Within hours, we found out that Walker wants to repeat the selloff of state power plants similar to the 2011 scheme, where he tried to give our state assets to his buddies at Koch Industries. In 2011, the plan was to have it be a no-bid, negotiated deal, but that was too much, even for GOP Senators like Rob Cowles and Mike Ellis, so it went under. By the end of the day, it reminded me of that Friday 2 years ago when Walker "dropped the bomb" and as I kept reading the bill and learning more about what was in it, I was constantly like "What the hell is this? What the hell is that?"

In 2013, the Koch selloff part of the bill will allegedly allow for bids on the plants (just ask Skyward and service providers bidding against Logisticare how well THAT'S going under this DOA) But I sure want to take a look at the full budget when it's released next week to see just how much Walker is counting on getting from these sales, and what shell game results from it.

And even projects such as the Hoan and the Harbor Assistance Program and the Freight Railroad work are nothing more than OKing what projects that DOT said they needed to get done. In fact, the Freight and Harbor Assistance approvals seem to be lower than what they asked for- with Walker yanking out any costs associated with tax revenue and deciding to borrow for the whole thing.

Because it's not like Walker is adding a lot of cushion for projects in this budget, if you look at the DOT's budget request. Walker's announcement does raise the request by another $500 million, but since he's claiming he won't raise gas taxes or other forms of income, it makes you wonder where the funding will come from.

So if Walker doesn't want more taxes for this and federal funding from above is declining (and the budget request says it will by $50 million...before any sequester), how do we pay for these $500 million in extra expenses? This is where the ALEC-style selloff of state assets plays in. And it might not just be power plants. Check out this item, buried deep inside the DOT budget request.

Request a statutory modification to create a program revenue appropriation for the receipt and expenditure of revenue from private or governmental sponsorship and partnership agreements and to give the Department explicit authority to execute such agreements, subject to limitations of federal and state law. Under such agreements, the Department would receive revenue from a sponsor in exchange for recognition of the sponsor through signage on a state highway or roadside facility (such as park-and-ride lots and rest areas) or the placement of the sponsor's logo on a Department product, equipment, or website. Revenues could be expended for maintenance of roadside facilities or for state highway maintenance and traffic operations.

Hey cool, it's the Diane Hendricks/ ABC Supply interchange in Beloit, and the Charlie Sykes Park n' Ride lot in Ozaukee County! And you thought the movie "Idiocracy" was a satire.

Debt and a rosy revenue scenario from ALEC-style selloffs of assets seem to be the main methods of paying for things if you look at this Transportation budget, which will kill it for the future. The budget request already includes $48 million more for debt service in the next 2 years (item 6 in the budget request). Not a good sign when you realize projects already are running behind schedule, and according to the state's Transportation Finance and Policy Commission the state has to invest another $680 million a year for the next decade just to keep up with needs. And with local governments constrained with tax levy limits and shared-revenue cuts, they can't make up the difference to keep on fixing the streets.

But corporate front men like Walker never care about the future, they just want to make their numbers for the short-term. Once the profits are used up, they get to "parachute out a rich man" as Gordon Gekko would say, and we get left having to clean up whatever's left of it. There's even damage in this DOT budget to the General Fund Budget, as noted in the Journal-Sentinel article

Walker wants to fund mass transit with money from the state's main account instead of its separate transportation fund, as has happened for years. Walker tried that in 2011, but failed to get the proposal passed. Transit advocates say keeping their funding in the transportation account provides them more protection in the long term.

In all, Walker wants to use $129 million from the general fund for transportation, the vast majority of it - $106 million - for transit.

This has the double-whammy of making transit have to fight out schools and prisons and Medicaid and related services for funding, leading to inevitable cuts from the state side, and also raising costs to the general fund by $212 million for the next 2 years. We already know that Walker's 2013-2015 budget is in deficit, perhaps by as much as $332 million, so this now means $544 million has to be cut from budget requests that already aren't meeting all needs.

So within 24 hours, what Governor Walker expected to be a good press event designed to show hs "moderate" credentials has collapsed, and exposed him as even more corrupt and fiscally reckless than we already knew him to be (and those of you in Milwaukee sure know it). Makes me wonder what we'll see when whole budget get released, because between the Medicaid and Transportation disasters of this week, we know it's already an unsustainable, deficit-ridden budget that'll leave us further in the hole and economically behind much of the rest of the nation. How many other departments are getting their services and budgets destroyed over the next 2 years?

I just hope there's something left for this state's finances to redeem when the new person takes over in 2 years. Then again, FUBARing services, funneling taxpayer dollars to campaign contributors and eventually forcing those services to be sold them off to campaign contributors is right out of the ALEC playbook, so why would we NOT be surprised to see a pile of debt-ridden junk in the Transportation budget?

Walker's Medicaid plan- even worse than you thought

Something wasn't adding up to me when I looked at Governor Walker's plans for Medicaid over the next 2 years. It wasn't just the stupidity in turning down the Obamacare-related Medicaid expansion (though as I said yesterday, that decision was stupid enough on its face). But what was bothering me was because the "increases in state spending" weren't ringing true, as Medicaid costs would go up on their own over the next 2 years without much expansion of services, simply because costs go up year-over-year.

Then I took a look at Page 3 from the "Work Makes you Free!" slideshow that Walker gave to WMC oligarchs yesterday, and it started to fit together. The slide makes a big show about mentioning that Walker's plan will increase General Fund revenue for Medicaid by $221.4 million next year, and another $200.9 million on top of that in fiscal year 2015, meaning a net increase of $643.6 million from what is projected for 2013 (+$221.4 million year 1, +$422.3 million year 2). Sounds like a lot, but it's really about 15% over 2 years.

After seeing that, I then looked at the Department of Health Services' budget request for the next 2 years, and my suspicions were confirmed. WALKER IS BARELY ADDING MORE THAN WHAT DHS SAID THEY NEEDED! Here's the comparison:

DHS budget request for Medicaid- $635.9 million increase
Walker Medicaid plan- $643.7 million increase
Difference- $7.7 million.

That's right, instead of increasing the Medicaid budget by 15.8%, which is what DHS said it needed just to keep up, Walker's taking all the credit for asking for an increase of 16.0%, and added increase of...0.2%. Basically nothing at all.

The DHS request also increased coverage in a much more responsible way than Walker's plan would, just assuming current law would continue as it were.

The funding requested in this item is based on MA caseload and intensity projections developed by DHS for the 2013-15 biennium. Those projections assume that current law pertaining to the MA program will remain in effect throughout the 2013-15 biennium. For these purposes, "current law" includes changes to the BadgerCare Plus program that were approved by the Legislature's Joint Committee on Finance and the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that went into effect July 1, 2012. Those changes relate primarily to the premiums and "other insurance" rules for non pregnant, non-disabled adults in the program with incomes greater than 133% of the federal poverty level. The Department's projections assume that any approvals needed to keep those changes in effect throughout the 2013-15 biennium will be obtained. Current law also includes continued enrollment in the Family Care, Family Care Partnership, PACE, and IRIS programs since the enrollment cap for those programs was lifted on April 3, 2012. The Department's request does not include an expansion of Family Care and related programs into additional counties during the 2013 15 biennium.

So they basically assumed a status quo budget, on Medicaid, which already pushed more than 11,000 off the Badgercare rolls due to higher premiums demanded by the state. But at least it covered people making up to 133% of poverty.

Walker's plan doesn't even do that. I'll start with this passage from the Governor's press release on the Medicaid plan.

Governor Walker’s proposal will cover people living in poverty through Medicaid and allow individuals above that level to access affordable health insurance coverage through the federal health insurance exchange. This proposal affects non-elderly, non-disabled adults. Under this plan, Wisconsinites in poverty will be covered by Medicaid and those above poverty up to four times the poverty level would receive federal health insurance premium subsidies to purchase health insurance offered in the exchange. By doing so, Wisconsin is projected to reduce the number of uninsured adults, ages 19-64, by 47 percent with 224,580 fewer people uninsured.

So the plan is to expand state Medicaid eligibility for some groups (particularly childless adults), and shove low-income recipients with children out into the Obamacare exchanges starting in 2014...and into the hands of Walker's buddies in the insurance industry.

Let's go back to page 5 of the "Work Makes you Free" plan. and note the graphic.

Amount of uninsured, Walker plan vs. taking Medicaid funds
Through Wisconsin Medicaid-
Taking ACA Medicaid funds- 90,691 LESS
Walker plan- 5,417 MORE

Through private insurance and Obamacare exchange-
Taking Medicaid- 161,987 more
Taking ACA Medicaid funds- 229,997 more (68,010 more than taking Medicaid)

The goal with this is two-fold.

1. Much like how they did in raising premiums to get people off of Badgercare, this puts more low-income individuals into the hands of the private insurance industry. (you wonder why the corporate greedheads at WMC love this plan?)

2. Overload the Obamacare exchanges that start next year, and then take advantage of the complaints of individuals that can't afford the premiums, or complain that "Obamacare is costing more than it should." Which is then an excuse to dismantle it and leave even more people at the mercy of the insurance companies. This is what makes the whole "I'm encouraging independence" line Walker's giving such bullshit, because it's actually discouraging people from having options and more disposable income in their pockets (which is true freedom), and instead leaving them to have to beg insurance companies and corporations for help. Which is just the way Republicans want the world to run.

And remember, Walker had the chance to formulate a state-run insurance exchange that would complement Wisconsin's Medicaid plans, but he and DHS delayed doing any work on it, gambling that the Republicans would win the White House in 2012 and end Obamacare, and when that failed spectacularly this November, Walker turned down creating a state exchange, and will let the feds set it up instead. But that's all part of the design, because in right-wing bubble world, they can't have people be helped through Obamacare, because then it becomes a lot harder to privatize health care once people see how it works and gives them economic security. Always remember, social outcomes don't matter when it comes to TeaBags like Walker- only political outcomes do.

Lastly, you know what's missing from the "Work Makes you Free" Powerpoint? A request of the WMC oligarchs to hire and insure low-income individuals, so they don't have to take up space on the Medicaid rolls and reduce the burdens of health insurance on the state budget. No, having the WMC types do their share to help solve this problem is never asked. You know, for a bunch of guys who claim to idolize Reagan, they sure seem to forget this statement.

"The best social program is a productive job for anyone who's willing to work"

In fact, the WMC crowd doesn't want to create jobs, but instead hoard profits and funnel the money upwards into their pockets. Walker and the WMC crowd want the working poor to stay destitute so they are stuck into low wages, and a low number of options for coverage. And God Forbid that low-income people actually do one of the best acts of independence- unionizing to demand higher wages and benefits. That is absolutely not part of the Walker plan, and will be actively discouraged, even though unionizing and getting higher wages would go a long way toward solving the uninsurance problem that exists in this country (failing the best solution, which of course is Medicare for all).

These people are the sick ones, not the Medicaid recipients. This Walker plan will not work, it'll throw even more people into desperation than even keeping the status quo Wisconsin Medicaid program would, and turning down the Medicaid expansion will cost taxpayers more in the short and long runs. The Walker Medicaid plan is a total lose-lose scenario, and much like with the turning down of high-speed rail, it'll cost Wisconsin taxpayers more money in exchange for less services. It is the work of someone who wishes to destroy the state, with Walker and his contributors grabbing the leavings and skipping town, which is the real Walker plan. Unless we expose it and stop it.

  EDIT: The Journal-Sentinel continues to imitate an actual news organization, as they grabbed a Fiscal Bureau estimate, and it shows Walker's plan would cost Wisconsin taxpayers an extra $250 million over the next 7 years,   and that 9,000, not 5,000, Wisconsinites would be kicked off of the state's Medicaid rolls. This really plan really is the worst of both worlds- higher cost and lower service.

WisGOP lies, chooses wrong on Medicaid and Obamacare

   I can't put it any simpler than that. I recognize that Governor Walker picks ideology and poses over anything that would work for Wisconsinites, so his decision to turn down the federal Medicaid expansion that's part of the Affordable Care Act didn't shock me. But the lies his associates are telling to try to justify this stupid move, as well as the costly, set-up-to-fail solution that Gov. Dropout is proposing in its place are the things that have reached a new level of disgusting insanity.

   It's not a coincidence that the day before Walker made his announcement (at an event funded by the greedhead oligarchs at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, naturally), the lying propagandists at Bradley Foundation front group Media TraKKKers shot out a release that got my bullshit detectors ringing loud and clear.

Supporters of expanding Medicaid have argued that by taking advantage of federal money appropriated through ObamaCare, the state can save up to $95 million. But that statistic, taken from a Legislative Fiscal Bureau report, isn’t completely accurate. The Kaiser Foundation study found that just the first 9 years a Medicaid expansion would cost the state of Wisconsin $725 million.

One of the reasons the LFB report reached a savings was because it only looked at the first 3 years of an expansion. The vast majority of the rising costs that state will bear because of the expansion come over time, well after the first three-year period is up.

So I went to the source to figure out where  smarmy d-bag Brian Sikma came up with the $725 million figure, and you also can go to the source by clicking right here.

   If you do, you'll see that Media Trakkkers is using a ridiculous apples-to-oranges comparison to come up with that claim. The reference is on page 42, but it doesn't deal with the question of "What will happen if Gov. Walker takes the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare?" Instead it compares what would happen IF THERE WAS NO OBAMACARE AT ALL. This is a non-issue when it comes to Walker's decision to take the Obamacare Medicaid money, because Obamacare is the law of the land and will not go away anytime soon (and probably not ever). Amazingly, the Journal-Sentinel's Jason Stein fell for Media Trakkkers line in his recap of Walker's absurd plan. (Update: Stein has taken down the "$725 million more expensive" reference from the story after being alerted to the faulty comparison. Golf clap.)  

   And what Media Trakkkers leaves out of that faulty comparison is the number of uninsured in Wisconsin is more than CUT IN HALF with Obamacare in place and with Wisconsin taking the Medicaid expansion- 300,000 people getting insurance (see page 51), and the improved economy and stability that comes from having more people insured pays back that projected $72.5 million a year extra many times over.

Now that the false Trakkkers claim has been put to bed, let's do the apples-to-apples comparison. First, how could states save money by choosing to expand a service? It seems counterfactual, but the Kaiser Foundation explains

The ACA Medicaid expansion aims to extend Medicaid coverage to most low-income people. Specifically, beginning in 2014, the ACA expands Medicaid eligibility to 138% of the federal poverty level (FPL) ($15,415 for an individual or $26,344 for a family of three in 2012) for citizens and qualified immigrants. The Medicaid expansion is 100% federally funded for the first three years (2014-2016) and at least 90% federally funded thereafter.

If all states undertake the ACA Medicaid expansion, they can extend coverage to their residents with minimal or no increase in state spending due to new federal Medicaid funds. If all states expand Medicaid under the ACA, total national Medicaid spending would increase by about $1.0 trillion over the 2013-2022 decade, with the federal government paying 93% of these costs. Most additional spending would be for the newly eligible. Of the total increased costs if all states implement the expansion, the federal government would pay $952 billion over 2013-2022, and the state share would be $76 billion (Figure ES-1). Under the ACA, the federal government will pay between 90% and 100% of the costs for those made newly eligible for Medicaid. While total Medicaid spending would increase by 16%, federal spending is expected to increase by 26% and state spending would increase by 3%, though resuls vary among states.  

And if you go further into the Kaiser Family Foundation Study, you'll see that Wisconsin varies to the good side, and that choosing to take the Medicaid money and covering more people would have been set up to be a huge money-saver for the state, had Walker decided to do so.

    Wisconsin change in Medicaid costs, Medicaid expansion vs. no expansion
   In 2016- Taking Medicaid expansion saves $116 million
   2013-2022- Taking Medicaid expansion saves a total of $248 million

   Wisconsin reduction in uninsured
    By 2022- Taking Medicaid expansion reduces uninsured by 123,000.

 The Kaiser Foundation adds another factor that doesn't show up much in the balance sheets of government, but sure has real economic effects. The Kaiser Foundation mentions that expanding Medicaid would allow for a major decrease in uncompensated care costs, which it defines as

spending on behalf of the uninsured that they did not pay themselves. Earlier research found that states and localities finance 30 percent of the uncompensated care.

Spending by states and localities on uncompensated care comes from grants to hospitals and clinics, the state share of Medicaid DSH payments, state and local support for graduate medical education, public hospitals, and indigent care programs.

In other words, it tries to reflect the cost and extra needs that result from treating the uninsured at hospitals, because by law they have to be treated. In Wisconsin's case, the Kaiser Foundation estimates that expanding Medicaid would cut these uncompensated costs by $248 million over the next 10 years, in addition to having more room freed up in emergency rooms to treat people that are truly in dire need. Seems like a no-brainer from any honest assessment. But when you have a no-brainer governor that's more concerned with making symbolic poses in order to raise campaign money from oligarchs who can't wait to take advantage of those in need, often the smart thing is not the thing that is done.

 

I'll go into just how loaded with fail Walker's substitute plan is at a later point (and no Journal-Sentinel, it is not a "middle ground," Walker's planting his flag high above the top of Bullshit Mountain), but we saw another example of Walker's "death to medical care by a thousand cuts" method this week. Lutheran Social Services announced it could not continue to provide services in the Eau Claire area due to low reimbursement  costs, and is closing 4 facilities and laying off 44 employees. This goes along with last month's closing of Eau Claire home health care provider Lifenet,  and the loss of 360 jobs announced this Fall by Community Health Partners, due to CHP not being able to make ends meet on the state's low-payment contracts.    

 

 And oh yeah, the bid to replace Logisticare (with Logisticare at a higher expense?) closes next week, with plenty of questions about the fairness and scope of services laid out in the bid, and a lack of flexibility on the Walker boys' desire for a "one-broker-for-the-entire-state" approach.  So do you trust this administration to perform policy that helps people's health outcomes and is cost-efficient? I sure don't, and I bet we end up with the worst of all worlds for the next 2 year in Wisconsin- fewer people covered with higher taxpayer costs, and our economy slowed due to higher health insurance premiums and related uncertainties taking up too much of the pie.  

Wisconsinites packing it up?

  One of the many reasons Scott Walker's austerity policies have failed in Wisconsin came to light in a Forbes magazine slideshow last week. Wisconsin ranked Number 10 in the nation for "States people are fleeing" for 2012, with 10% more people leaving the state than coming into it.  The stat comes from United Van Lines' annual survey, which they've put on for 36 years, and is drawn from over 125,000 moves throughout the United States.

  What makes the number remarkable for Wisconsin is not that a lot of people are leaving- that's been fairly common in some parts of the Midwest for the last few decades due to deindustrialization and people seeking warmer weather (and indeed, Illinois and Michigan end up on this Top 10 list as well).  But what it does show is a reversal of the trend of the last 20 years in Wisconsin.

  When I saw this Forbes article, I went to the Census Bureau's site, and saw that it had recently come out with its annual list of state-to-state migration patterns for 2011,  and I wanted to take a look and see how Wisconsin measured up. What I found out surprised me when I compared Wisconsin to our Midwest neighbors. The figure of net migration compares the number of people who leave vs. those who come in.

   Net migration, Midwest 2011  
   Wisc +4,069
   Minn -2,224
   Iowa -4,111
   Ohio -14,271
   Ind. -15,354
   Mich -47,347
   Ill. -52,804

   That's right, Wisconsin was the only state in the Midwest to get more people coming in than going out in 2011. And as the Wisconsin DOA wrote last year, that was basically the trend we'd had for the previous 20 years, attracting people from other parts of the country.  The Wisconsin DOA did its latest demographic projections last July, and page 11 of the report notes that Wisconsin gained an average of more than 20,000 people a year in both the 1990s and the first part of the 2000s, before starting to have people leave with the declining economy in the later 2000s.

   Wisconsin net migration, 1990-2010
   1990-2000  +227,637
   2000-2005 +105,834
   2005-2010 -25,897

   What's also interesting in the DOA report is that a lot of the moves are very specific to age, as Wisconsin often have youth move in, college grads leave (often for bigger cities like Chicago or New York), and then have many young families "boomerang" back to the state once they get their careers and families established.  

In Wisconsin, recent decades have been marked by net gains of young people ages 0-4 through 15-19 (the latter group being affected by the influx of out-of-state students attending Wisconsin’s many universities and colleges), out-migration in the post-college cohorts ages 20-24 and 25-29 (sometimes through 30-34), and then gains in "young families" cohorts starting with ages 30-34 or 35-39. Adult migration tends to taper off through about ages 60; beyond that age—early retirees onward—migration tends to be neutral, slightly higher in some decades and slightly lower in others...This pattern, or "signature," tends to hold across time: in decades with strong positive net gain, all of these rates will rise, usually with the strongest increases in the young-adult categories; in decades of net out-migration, all of these rates will fall, with the largest drops occurring among younger adults.

  And this is where the policies of Fitzwalkerstan come into play. How are you going to get those young adults and young families to come back to Wisconsin when the state's education, open-mindedness reputation, and high quality of level have been debased? Young adults of age 20-40 in particular have a lot of choices when it comes to where they want to live, and they're not going to stick around or return to a place that has a regressive social and economic policy.

 I know, I was one of those "boomerangers." I left Wisconsin at the start of 2000 to go to Indianapolis to try my luck there at age 25. And it worked in the sense that I improved my job status, education and salary. But I also missed the quality of life that existed in Wisconsin, and wanted to move back to a place that valued education and held a value system that seemed to be closer to my own. Being single, I had that opportunity at age 30 in 2005, and moved back to Madison, later Milwaukee, and then back to Madison.  

   But that was at a time when Wisconsin was still holding to the Progressive tradition and had Jim Doyle in office. And this is where you have to worry about what Walker in inflicting on this state, and its long-term effect. Because what former Badgers are seeing from outside is the state being turned upside-down, and turning into the type of neo-Confederate state that we used to rip on other places for being, saying "Thank God Wisconsin isn't like that." Well now it is, and the Forbes survey showing net migration of -10% may be an awful harbinger of what's really happening in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan. The people with talent and options are leaving, and not being replaced, which not only drives down the level of talent that is left in the state, it also stagnates any chance for growth in the future.