How Wisconsin made big Medicaid cuts with little controversy, By Jake Grovum, August 5, 2010, Stateline.org: “As Wisconsin lawmakers looked ahead to their two-year state budget early last year, the outlook was grim. As the economy continued its freefall, a projected $5.7 billion deficit ballooned to $6.6 billion, the largest in state history. Every state program was on the chopping block, but Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income people, was an especially big target because it makes up one-fifth of the state’s budget. Governor Jim Doyle’s initial budget prescription called for more than $400 million in cuts to Medicaid. By June, when the Legislature approved the budget, the reduction was up to $625 million – about 10 percent of Wisconsin’s total cost for the joint state-federal program. But for Wisconsin, passing a budget with such drastic cuts to Medicaid was just the beginning for state health officials, advocates and the state’s 30,000 health care providers. Doyle and the Legislature devised a novel approach: They gave agency officials a dollar amount to cut, but ceded authority over how to reach that figure. They didn’t even require final legislative or gubernatorial approval to enact the changes…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty