The state Senate passed a bill Thursday that would provide basic health insurance to thousands of low-income Wisconsin residents.
Gov. Jim Doyle introduced the BadgerCare Plus Basic Plan to the legislature last month, aiming to temporarily cover the nearly 25,000 people who were turned away from the state's more comprehensive Core Plan. The BadgerCare Plus Core Plan stopped its enrollment October 2009 at 64,000 due to budget constraints.
The Basic Plan would ""offer a life-line for the people on the waiting list,"" according to Julie Laundrie, spokesperson for the bill's author Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Waunakee. The plan includes limited physician, hospital and prescription coverage.
The bill passed 17 to 16 without a single Republican vote. Many who opposed the bill called it a step toward ""Obamacare.""
""We have an alternative program; it's called the private sector,"" Minority Leader Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said during the debate.
But Carrie Lynch, spokesperson for state Senate Majority Leader Russell Decker, D-Schofield, said the plan applies only to childless adults with yearly incomes of less than $21,000 for whom the private market will not offer insurance. She said Decker voted for the bill ""to give access to people who desperately need health care and cannot get it anywhere else.""
Lynch said the state did not allocate any funds to the program, which would be paid for entirely by individual $130 monthly premiums.
However, state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, the sole Democrat to oppose the bill, said these would not be enough to sustain the program. She said Wisconsin would eventually have to take money out of the Core Plan or create an enormous reserve fund to make up the difference.
Vinehout said the plan would provide poor care and that only the sickest of those eligible for it, who already significantly pay out of pocket, would take advantage of it.
""You can say they have an option, but are they going to choose that option?"" Vinehout said. ""The answer is no because it's too much money.""
The bill has moved to the state Assembly for consideration.
