The details are sketchy, but according to this very specific letter to the Cap Times:
Dear Editor: On Page 246 of the budget proposed by Gov. Scott Walker, we find the following: “The governor recommends increasing the efficiency in the Medical Assistance program by making the following changes: (a) limiting Medicaid reimbursement for end stage renal disease.”
This may sound innocuous, but it is anything but for those people who are suffering from end stage renal disease and are thus on kidney dialysis. Since our governor recommends this policy in the hope of “increasing efficiency,” he has set himself up essentially as a death panel of one, deciding who lives and who dies. If he limits Medicaid reimbursement for dialysis and patients can no longer afford dialysis, they will die -- due to lack of money.
Is this what we want Wisconsin to be -- the first state to say that kidney dialysis patients are too expensive and therefore their lives are expendable, and that to be more efficient we must cut off their lifesaving treatment? I hope not.
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