Scott Walker's Sabotage of Healthcare in Wisconsin

Sowing fear and confusion 

You would think intentionally obstructing healthcare for families would be some sort of a crime.

It's not, it's Scott Walker's policy, and it is the position of the Republican Party.

Robert Kraig and Kevin Kane of Wisconsin Citizen Action have the scoop on the results of Scott Walker blocking healthcare, a report that has received far too little publicity.

Walker has blocked information about healthcare rates; blocked $100s millions in Medicaid with the assurance that most Wisconsin media will go along with the Walker charade that he just cares so much about the Wisconsin people that he needs to block their families' access to healthcare.

Walker and his family have been living on tax-payer-financed healthcare since Walker was 24-years-old and hungry for a public position. Walker moved to the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa so he could run for an open GOP-leaning district in 1993. That's 20 years of tax-payer-supported healthcare for Scott Walker.

Shouldn't Governor Walker and his family abide by the same rules for healthcare that he is proposing for everyone else?  Shouldn't all public officials?

Now, Walker spends his time raising money from fat-cats and living on the public dime, while ranting against and blocking anything providing for the common good of the Wisconsin people -- like easy access to healthcare for other peoples' families. Walker says God tells him what to do.

Consumer activists and the Obama administration remain busy trying to put out information, such as Helping Consumers Understand their Coverage Options, from Coast to Coast.

For those looking for specific rate information who live in states such as Wisconsin with a healthcare-hostile governor, where do you go now?

You can try your local county healthcare site, until the federal web site is more reliable.

You have to wait for the national site to function because private contractors built the HealthCare.gov site, as healthcare industry whistleblower Wendall Potter points out.

 I would have liked to have single payer healthcare for everyone, but that is too much to ask in this dysfunctional Congress.

Scott Walker meanwhile is raising even more money; still living on publicly-funded healthcare for his family, and now a John Doe probe is looking into how Walker and his party raised all that money in the 2012 Recall election.

Scott Walker's Medicaid Rejectionism Is Disgusting

Blocking Medicaid for Working Families Is Sick

Scott Walker has been on one hell of a tax-payer financed political ride since 1993, happily raving against anything public except his own tax payer-funded salary, pension and health care .

But Walker and the Tea Party's hypocrisy and extremism won't play forever, no matter how many $millions the Koch brothers and other billionaires give this most unpopular politician in Wisconsin political history.

Scott Walker has now admitted he will deny Medicaid to 10,000s of Wisconsin citizens because this will bring him political advantages in the Republican Party.

And Walker's cynical calculation also compels him to deny an additional $340 million through 2021. So ideologically extreme has the Republican Party become, Walker's calculation is correct.

This effort by Walker and some 13 other Republican governors will cost $8.4 billion in federal funding in 2016 alone, denying health care to the working poor, some 3.6 million people.

What's the political line explaining why Walker would intentionally block health care to Wisconsin citizens?

Walker and other Republican governors, mostly in the deep south, say they are concerned Medicaid will not always be around as a federal health insurance program, an ironic position as the Republicans have accelerated their efforts to destroy the popular Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security social insurance. So their concern is fiscal.

But they also say they block Medicaid intended for the people because they "care" too much.

"I care for the people of this state too much to force them to live a life of dependence on the government," said Walker.

Walker has enjoyed his tax payer-funded salary, pension and health care since 1993, so he engages in a staggeringly blatant act of hypocrisy that will cost him only politically outside the GOP bubble.

But the working poor will pay with their health.

Addressing Republican policymakers like Walker, Ryan, McConnell and Boehner, J. P. Green notes, "They've got good health care and income security for themselves and their families, and they apparently believe that they can afford to indulge ideological extravagances with impunity. Not a one of them shows any indication that they give a damn about millions of American children having no access to health care, high unemployment or educational opportunities."

And as Paul Krugman points out with equal disgust:

...Medicaid rejectionism will deny health coverage to roughly 3.6 million Americans, with essentially all of the victims living near or below the poverty line. And since past experience shows that Medicaid expansion is associated with significant declines in mortality, this would mean a lot of avoidable deaths: about 19,000 a year, the [Rand] study estimated.
Just think about this for a minute. It's one thing when politicians refuse to spend money helping the poor and vulnerable; that's just business as usual. But here we have a case in which politicians are, in effect, spending large sums, in the form of rejected aid, not to help the poor but to hurt them.

And Walker, in a statement bizarre even by his deceitful standards, has said he wants to get back to the private sector and make some "real money," because his governor's salary of  $144,423/year does not satisfy his wife. That was in March 2012. We can assume his statement is no longer operative.