Scott Walker hasn't had to work very hard as governor. Its been a cake walk really, handing off an easy 40 year agenda and ALEC legislation to his party leaders in the assembly and senate.
No compromise, no debate and complete control statewide of local governments. The hard work of making something work, or at the least, seeking a solution that actually solves a problem is not on his radar.
Even so, it's still jaw dropping to think that he'll let so many Wisconsinites lose their health insurance to make the false point ObamaCare is bad. It's vengeance, bordering on a tantrum:
That's irresponsible, no matter how you look at it. So let's take a look at a Democratic governors response:Bloomberg: "We will ultimately push back," Walker said. "This is a problem created by this president and the previous Congress. It's something that requires a solution at the federal level. States didn't create this problem, the federal government did. And they should fix it."
Pennsylvania became the first state to announce a plan to save people’s ObamaCare subsidies if the Supreme Court rules against the federal government sometime this month.So who will Walker kick to the side of the road, and leave without health care to suffer and in some cases die:
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf said in a statement late Tuesday that he has submitted a blueprint to create a state-based exchange to save subsidies for nearly 350,000 people with ObamaCare, which he called “the responsible thing to do. I am committed to protecting hardworking Pennsylvanians from losing the assistance they rely on to purchase health care coverage.”
A new report by the Urban Institute, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, outlines "the combined effect of not expanding Medicaid and losing marketplace (exchange) assistance" for Wisconsin in 2016:
* 247,000 more uninsured if exchange tax-credit subsidies are lost;* 21,000 additional uninsured if Medicaid is not expanded;* $1.128 billion in federal exchange spending lost;* $481 million in Medicaid expansion funds lost.
There's an extra bonus layer of stupid here:
ReplyDeleteA company in Waukesha called Connecture got $1.2M in tax credits from WEDC. What do Connecture workers in Waukesha do? They design and administer state health insurance exchanges for Minnesota and Maryland.
So, not only are we subsidizing other states' healthcare by refusing to expand Medicaid, we're also throwing state-level tax credits at Minnesota's exchange.
Minnesota, could you please just annex us at this point? Or trade us health care for Aaron Rodgers? Something?
"This is a problem created by this president and the previous Congress. It's something that requires a solution at the federal level.."
ReplyDeleteDo you mean a solution like setting up a federal exchange when you refuse to do it, Governor?